The Open Door
by Academia Nut
Summary: There are creatures in the multiverse that should not be allowed beyond their own confines. Unfortunately someone has opened a door that should have remained closed. Thousand Shinji sequel/sidestory
1. Prologue: The Open Door

**Prologue: The Open Door**

The day had not started off well, and it had only been going downhill from there. A grey, dreary sky had met him when he woke up in the morning, and just as he had left for school a sort of hybrid of a clinging mist and a half-hearted rain began to sort of drift to the ground. It was a rather depressing sort of precipitation, in that while it still had all the misery of soaking you to the bone, it had not the energy to make up for it. It was as if the weather was tormenting you out of apathetic boredom rather than actual maliciousness, which made it all the worse.

Continuing with the motif of the universe casually toying with him, somewhere along the line one of the tires for his bike had developed a slow leak, gradually making it harder and harder to push the pedals and guide it, until finally he had given up and hauled it over to a pedestrian tunnel running beneath a roadway. The weary drizzle floating in the air made it hard to actually escape the cold water, but at least there was a light in the tunnel that gave him a better view than outside. Sort of. The off yellow bulb had a tendency to flicker whenever a car passed overhead, making the illumination sporadic at times.

All in all the day seemed constructed to annoy him, and he knew that it was only going to get worse. While technically not late for first period yet, there was no way he would get to class in time, meaning that when he did arrive he would get chewed out by his teachers for being late. And of course, no matter how well the school administration accepted his reasonable excuse of getting a flat tire pretty much exactly half way between his home and the school, the bane of his existence would inevitably treat his lateness as some sort of personal affront.

Then she would probably sulk and he and the others would probably have to figure out some way to cheer her up before she tried to destroy the universe.

Again.

Some days, especially on a day like today, it did not pay to be called Kyon. Especially since that wasn't exactly his name and now that he reflected upon it he knew that he would find it especially annoying today and Haruhi would find some reason to use an endless repetition of "Kyon-kun! Kyon-kun!" and as usual he would be limited in his ability to tell the spoiled, bratty, hyperactive destroyer and creator of worlds to just shut up.

Still, as Kyon fought with his tire repair kit in the poorly lit, damp tunnel, he made very, _very _certain that he did not even _think _that things could not possibly get worse. He was enough of a pessimist to know that things could easily get much worse, enough of a cynic to know that things _would _get worse, and enough of a realist to know that tempting the cosmos, especially when it already had it out for you, would not improve the situation.

Unfortunately, fate was being enough of a bitch to take his lack of invitation for a smiting as a sign of hubris and decide to give him a whole knew dollop of pain and suffering.

Kyon first knew something was wrong when the rain immediately behind him ceased its irregular patter. Turning about, Kyon discovered Yuki standing behind him wearing a rain smock with an umbrella in her hand. At first Kyon was relieved, but then he noticed that her normally emotionless and impassive face had a hint of concern and worry, perhaps even a smidgen of fear. To those that knew Yuki, this was somewhat like seeing a normal person running about in a blind panic with their hands waving in the air screaming bloody murder.

"We must leave," Yuki told him.

"Yuki, what's wrong? I…" Kyon began to ask something when he suddenly saw Yuki's face flash with fear and anger, her focus shifting from him to something behind him. Whirling about, Kyon discovered another person in the tunnel.

The person was wearing a somewhat garish purple and blue raincoat, the hood pulled up over the head and the whole body slouched forward while simultaneously leaning up against a wall, as if it were a chore simply to stand. The hands were slung in the pockets of the coat, again as if even letting the arms hang from the shoulders was simply too much effort. From the angle the person's face could not be seen, and so voluminous was the coat that it was impossible to even tell the gender.

With a sort of awful slowness, not from anything particularly ominous but because the motion felt poorly scripted, the figure turned its face towards the two SOS Brigade members, revealing an androgynous but slightly more male face concealed behind a pair of thick, dark sunglasses, incongruous with the dark, steel skies above. The face split into an ugly, lopsided grin that felt absurdly forced, almost as if someone else was trying to force the expression with their fingers.

The person then chuckled, producing a weird, atonal sound, before the person, tentatively labelled as a 'he', said in a choppy, disjointed manner, "I see simple hellos are not welcome here."

"They are to your kind," Yuki replied coldly. Already strongly suspicious that this had something to do with Haruhi, Kyon now knew for certain.

"Do I really scare you that badly? Is my presence here the dark mirror for your kind?" The man… thing… whatever asked.

"We are nothing alike," Yuki replied coldly. Normally everything she did was cold, or at least cool, but this was like comparing dry ice to a snowball: both were cold, but only one would burn when thrown at you.

"Your denial only tells me you know how lucky your kind is in comparison to my kind… and how _limited _as well," the man replied.

Getting somewhat annoyed, Kyon finally interrupted and asked, "Who or what are you?"

Yuki responded, "It is an extra-dimensional entity, one from another set of realities that the Integrated Data Entity has only recently become aware of. It is… malevolent."

The thing canted its head to the side awkwardly, as if attempting to affect an air of bored disdain but not quite getting the motions right. Sighing, it said, "Those are our cousins, we are not so uncaring."

"What about the man whose body you stole?" Yuki accused.

"His mind is being entertained as an honoured guest within the palace of my master. We are not so fortunate, as always, as to be able to simply form 'humanoid interfaces' at will," the thing said.

Kyon looked at the man again and he realized that all of the creepy awkwardness could be said to stem from the fact that it looked like the mind controlling it was unfamiliar with the skin it was wearing. Seeing his stare, the man reached up and removed his glasses. The reason for their presence became immediately obvious.

Instead of eyes, there were only empty pits filled with blackness, and perhaps, if you stared too long at them, tiny twinkling stars that should not have had room to exist. It was an eerie, disturbing sight that was mercifully cut short by the thing returning the glasses to their position on its face, but what had been seen could not be unseen and Kyon felt a shiver creep up his spine that could not be blamed upon the weather.

Not even the homicidal Ryoko had displayed anything quite so sinister, and perhaps only the monsters conjured up by Haruhi in Closed Space during her blackest moods could approach the inhuman malignancy that now radiated off of the creature.

"If you truly care at all, the man will be returned unharmed to his body after we have finished our conversation. His destruction would not serve us, and we have no desire to antagonize any of you. We merely wished to ask a favour of you, and it is not one that would be truly onerous or odious," the thing said.

"His kind lies. Do not listen to him," Yuki warned.

Snickering harshly, the thing replied, "And what if our request was that you keep doing what you are doing? Would that cause you to immediately go out and tell Haruhi everything simply to be contrary to what we asked?"

Yuki frowned before she said, "Your kind always have ulterior motives."

"But of course. For now though, it is entertainment. We get a cheap laugh or two out of your various misadventures handling your young, immature goddess. We have no intention of disrupting the delicate balancing act you maintain, not when it is so amusing to watch. No, we merely wish to ask for permission to travel through this dimension," the thing said.

"Why?" Kyon asked suspiciously.

"Your goddess has altered this reality so that those who know how can slip through. We intend to use this reality as a transit hub of sorts, allowing us to slip through to other realms, other possible realities. Unfortunately, should your goddess alter the rules again, we would no longer have such an opportunity open to us. Pragmatically, we wish to spread to other realities as a form of back-up plan, but really, we are in a lull phase of our own operation back home and it would amuse us to no end to explore infinity," the creature replied.

"So you want to conquer the universe," Kyon said flatly.

"Just our own, and if you knew it, you would agree that it needs conquering. Where we come from is not a nice place, not a nice place at all," the thing said.

"Your kind makes it that way," Yuki accused.

"As I said, those are our cousins, who incidentally, we are offering, one time only, to keep away from your lovely reality. They are far less subtle, yet far more experienced with trickery, and no where near as benevolent as my kind. Also, as extra-dimensional travellers, we are ultimately unaffected by your goddess. Oh, scouts and agents might perish during a reality rewrite, and the doors might be barred to us, but ultimately neither we nor our less compassionate brethren actually care what happens here," the creature replied.

Kyon shuddered in mute terror. Assured destruction was what had held the various factions in line and prevented any overt action around Haruhi, but evil outsiders with no concern for casualties added a whole new level of horror to the calculations.

"What would your 'cousins' do if they got here?" Kyon asked.

"They would destroy us," Yuki stated.

"Correct. There are those who would immediately want to charge in and cause all sorts of death and destruction, the streets running with rivers of blood and that sort of thing, all very cliché and predictable. Haruhi would probably panic under such a situation and realize that having alien invaders from another dimension slaughtering her friends is not something she would want and rewrite this world into something far more bland and boring. And then there would be the others who would seek a more indirect approach, who would seek to _change _her," the creature then lifted one of the man's hands out of the pocket of the jacket. At first it was normal, but then with a sickening crunch the bones started to warp and break, the flesh splitting open to release jets of iridescent flame. Bits of burning, molten fat dripped from the limb for a moment until it all sealed up and returned to normal.

"How would you like it if Haruhi was informed of the sort of goddess she truly is and then convinced that she deserves to be worshipped, that she deserves sacrifices made to her? Or how would you like it if she was convinced that whips and chains and leather and piercings in sensitive places sound like a fun time and everyone should join in? Or all of a myriad of other possibilities, of ways that she could be corrupted. Every human vice and weakness and flaw and negative aspect that you can think of, my kind, and our cousins more so, can exploit and magnify. It would be so easy too with someone like Haruhi. But we do not want that, we merely wish to explore. So what do you say? We leave you alone and keep the nastier members of the cosmos off your back, and you leave us alone and keep Haruhi happy like you have already been doing?" The thing asked.

"Why are you asking us?" Kyon asked back.

"Well, technically Haruhi should be the one we're asking, but that entails a certain unpredictability we do not desire, so it falls to her 'handlers' to ask permission from. Of course, _all _of the SOS Brigade should be here, but Itsuki is both particular strong and particularly vulnerable against me, so he won't come within a hundred metres of my position, and Mikuru is rightfully terrified of what I am and what I represent, so I ask you two, knowing that you can speak for the group," the creature replied.

Yuki looked at Kyon in a sideways manner for a moment before she said, "You are not to be trusted… but the Data Integration Entity trusts you more where you are visible. We will not act against you."

Kyon looked at the thing warily before he said, "I agree, I don't trust you, but I don't know how to stop you from doing something worse if you don't get your way."

"Excellent. A pity that we could not work more directly, but here the deities do not know their own power, unlike where I come from. If you need anything, you two, or any other member of the Brigade, can simply say my master's name three times and a representative will be sent to you," the thing said.

"What is your master's name?" Kyon asked.

"Tzintchi."


	2. Rematch

**Chapter One: Rematch**

The rumble of battle could be heard in the distance as the guns of Tokyo-3 duelled with the latest intruder threatening to extinguish the human race. Up close the roar was quite literally ear shattering and could even kill an unprotected human that stood too close, but here, several valleys away from the primary fighting, the fury of the storm of metal being thrown at the Angel was reduced to a low, continuous thunder.

And then, for a brief, awful moment all sound was drowned out by an eerie buzzing noise, the sort of thing that would set animals into a blind panic in their cages half a continent away. But then the sound stopped, replaced by something far, far more terrible.

They stood there, a quartet of them, fifty metres tall and each one of them ghastly and horrible in its own unique way.

One was clad in bronze armour that flowed and fused with brilliant scarlet flesh, its face obscured behind a helm of ancient design and cruel, pitiless countenance. Enormous, bullish horns rose from beneath the helmet, while the hands were set with terrible rending claws capable of gutting battleships and the brass hooves on the feet could easily slice through tanks. Not that these natural weapons were necessary considering the colossal bronze axe it held in one hand and the cruel, barbed and bloody whip it held in the other. Sprouting from the armour on its back were two great, leathery wings clearly large enough to carry this beast aloft. Circling about it were keening warrior women, armed and armoured in bronze capable of cutting through steel, their hair streaming behind them as blood coloured banners.

Standing next to this war god forged in the traditions of Mediterranean antiquity was the bearer of plagues and pestilence. Its flesh simultaneously bloated and gaunt, it was corrupt throughout, bearing a tangible miasma of disease that caused all about it not forged of immortal essences to wither and rot. What exactly it had once looked like was impossible to say beyond the fact that it carried itself upon a humanoid frame, so decayed and twisted were its scabrous features. Somewhere along the line its lower jaw had come loose, leaving a long tongue hanging free, dozens of lamprey-like maws adorning the nearly prehensile appendage. Clutched in one meaty, tumorous mitt was a great, ghastly sword that was more of a cleaver for preparing meat than a weapon of war. Its grey-green, necrotic flesh crawled with life, from yellow maggots the size of large dogs to humanoid figures that seemed to be walking conglomerations of cancers give life. A layer of pus and ooze adorned everything of this monstrosity, and its skeletal wings were not so much bat-like as they were bits of bone and connective tissue with great sheets of green mucus replacing the skin typically found on such appendages.

Flanking the war god on the opposite side from the plague bearer was a creature that met just about every dictionary definition of the word 'obscene'. Not only was it an unholy monstrosity like its fellows, but just to look upon it would have caused any so called 'moral guardian' to spontaneously combust in sheer horror. Its flesh was a bright, garish, sex toy pink, and the only adornments were not so much covering its flesh as piercing it. Not that covering up would have done much good without a jumbo jet sized burkha, for it seemed that every inch of its flesh had some form of erogenous zone, male and female, copied over, and in many places the various mouths and genitalia and nipples were interacting in ways that only made glimpsing the creature even more of a violation of decency laws. Of course, the places where there would have been such things on a human were only writ large versions of what was expected. Six large orifices, gaping like wounds, leaked out semen, sexual lubricants, saliva, narcotics, liquor, and beer. From the top of its head, framing its perfectly formed face sprouted a cluster of writhing black snakes and decidedly phallic tentacles. Clutched in one hand and coiled about its seductively proportioned hips was a long, snaking whip, intended for capture where the war god's meant to inflict ghastly, bleeding wounds. The opposite hand bore the true killing implement, a brutal crab like claw that could peel open hardened bunkers with casual, dismissive ease. Great black, feathered wings rose from its shoulder blades, just as with the others. Swirling about this monster were keening, naked, seductive women, their siren call capable of lulling mortals into passivity so that they could have their way with them.

But leading the group was the most awful one of all. At first glance it seemed the most human of them all, a Titan of old clad in a simple loincloth and wearing a face concealing head dress like that of an ancient pharaoh, but further examination of its flesh revealed a certain incorporeal quality to it, such that if you gazed too long at it you could see beyond. Not beyond into the surrounding area, but beyond, into the cosmos of sparkling stars, billowing nebulae, and swirling galaxies. And if you gazed further, you would then see beyond even that, into the space between the stars, the space between the void, where these creatures made their homes, and the mind shattering horrors that dwelt within. Of course, to stare at such things was hypnotic, meaning that the longer you looked at it, the harder it became to look away, until it was too late. Clasped in its great hands was the symbol of its authority, a titanic spear that coiled and uncoiled like the strands of life and fate. Once this had been metaphorical, but time with its new master had altered the weapon such that it now literally moved upon its own like a writhing snake. Adorning its back were not one but three pairs of wings, the feathers adorning them constantly shifting through a myriad, hypnotic, unpredictable pattern of reds, blues, and purples. Flying about it were dozens of smaller versions, whispering secrets to their great master.

The Evangelion avatars of Tzintchi, Asukhon, Reigle, and Mislaato were all here. It was perhaps something of a risk, but the temptation to play around in this timeline, so similar and yet not at all similar to their own, had overwhelmed them. Their objectives were simple: Asukhon would engage in a little rematch with Zeruel, Reigle would hunt down the souls of SEELE to add to their collection, Mislaato would find and devour Gendo for similar reasons, and Tzintchi would just observe and laugh.

It was good to be the king.

Taking to the air and followed by their clouds of lesser daemons, the four Chaos Gods observed the familiar terrain from the air and wondered what their former comrades, or hell, _they_, would think of such a sight. The thought brought chuckles to their dark hearts. Breaking into a wide banking turn when they reached the airspace above the city, they discovered that Zeruel was already descending into the Geofront. Swooping in, they followed as the Fourteenth Angel was met by the barrage from the waiting Unit 02.

If NERV had not known about these new intruders, then they certainly did now. The battle paused for a moment as both defender and attacker tried to discern just what the hell these new, unholy monstrosities were and exactly whose side they were on. Finally after the Chaos Evas landed some distance away and folded their wings to watch did the fight resume, with Unit 02 opening up with everything it had.

Asukhon gazed over the equipment and sneered. Pathetic. Unit 02's only hope was that the absolutely lacklustre showing so far had kept the Angel from adapting much. And… nope… Unit 02 got decapitated, and an appropriate fight scene before hand either.

Getting up, Asukhon stretched her Eva's wings a bit while rolling her shoulders and limbering up a bit before stalking over to the Angel, cracking her whip and bellowing out in a booming voice, "Hey, shit head, its time for our rematch, you and me. One on one."

Zeruel considered this offer for a moment before it fired its main beam weapon directly at the slowly advancing Asukhon. There was a tremendous explosion and then… Asukhon continued to advance, as if she had never even been hit. Zeruel fired again and again and again to no avail, until the unholy beast was standing next to it.

Casually Asukhon snapped out her barbed whip, cracking it against one of Zeruel's arms, shredding the broad, flat, thin, cutting appendage. It lashed out with its other arm, only for the red and bronze titan to dodge aside contemptuously. In fact, all she did was evade its attacks for a time until it regenerated the wounded arm, at which point she lacerated the opposite one.

"Come on you bastard, evolve, you're no sport the way you are now!" Asukhon bellowed while the other gods watched in amusement.

"My counterpart is attempting to sneak into the battle while carrying an N2 mine," Reigle pointed out.

"I know," Tzintchi replied while watching with amusement at Asukhon teaching Zeruel to be a better melee combatant just so that she could have more fun slaughtering the Angel later.

"Should we let her join in on our fun?" Mislaato asked slyly.

Tzintchi pondered for a moment before he replied, "Nah. The Children are not the ones we are here to torment. My dear Reigle, if you would do the honours, could you disarm that little firecracker she is carrying before she hurts herself with it?"

"Of course," Reigle burbled happily, waving a hand and causing the N2 mine clutched in Unit 00's hands to corroded and disintegrate into its component parts in seconds, leaving a very stunned looking Rei examining the rust stains on her Eva's hands.

"Incidentally, how goes the hunt by your Reiglings for SEELE?" Tzintchi asked idly.

The terrified faces of the various SEELE members were shoved out of the pus and mucus engorged flesh of Reigle's Eva for a moment, vomiting forth the lethal slime from their lungs just long enough to begin screaming before they were once again dragged beneath the surface by the Reiglings that infected the Eva.

"Very nice," Tzintchi commented.

"I get first crack at playing with them when we get home. Bastards cost me my father, I deserve some fun time with them, but the ones we already have you already nearly broke before I woke up," Mislaato pointed out with a slight pout.

"There, there my dear, we already agreed that you would get to have this batch. Not quite the same I know, but its not like any of us didn't have our own grievances with them and you were still gestating at the time," Tzintchi said soothingly.

"I know, I know, it's just that… holy shit, is that _you?_" Mislaato said in surprise, pointing at where Unit 02's head had landed, the enormous thing having crashed through the ceiling of a shelter, and sitting there staring morosely at it.

"What the _fuck?_ Alright, change of plans. Mislaato, go hunt down Gendo whenever you want, I need to see how pathetic I really was without Khnemu and the teachings of Tzeentch," Tzintchi grumbles while heading out from his observation position to examine this other version of him. Already his Black Pharaohs were flying ahead to detain everyone and keep the alternate Shinji from fleeing.

By the time Tzintchi reached Shinji, Zeruel was finally fighting at Asukhon's demanding standards, which meant that both of them were now engaged in a blurring whirlwind of death from which a light rain of blood was being ejected. Shielding the shelter with his Eva, Tzintchi peered in at the panicking crowds being kept in line by his servants and how they had isolated Shinji, who had just collapsed into a hopeless heap next to Unit 02's severed head.

Forcing his flesh opaque so that Shinji would focus upon him and not the swirling visions from beyond, Tzintchi exited his Eva in a deliberately Christ-like pose with his arms held wide, supported by ethereal tendrils of force until his bare feet touched the concrete floor and Tzintchi stood before the apathetic Shinji.

The deity stalked about the creature that could have been him if not for the intervention of the gods, and he felt only disgust. Finally he reached down, grabbed the boy by the shirt and hauled him effortlessly to his feet. There was no real fear in the boy's eyes, just bottomless self loathing.

Sad, apathetic brown eyes stared into a black void, before finally Tzintchi could no longer stand to hold the piece of filth and so he dropped the boy unceremoniously to the floor.

Tzintchi gazed at the severed head of Unit 02, still wearing the armour the Evas had originally come with before he had helped influence the designers into developing better equipment. Finally an awful idea crystallized in his mind.

"Is it too big for you? Is the price of failure not tangible enough even when it stares you in the face like this?" Tzintchi asked, his voice echoing with power.

Shinji may have mumbled something.

Tzintchi let the blackness surrounding his face lift enough to reveal his mouth so that he could grin evilly at the boy. "If _this _was not enough for you, then perhaps something a bit more tragic rather than statistical will help you."

When they dragged her in, she was still in shock from the disconnect just before Unit 02's head was severed. Of all the sights that day, perhaps the most eerie for the civilians in that shelter was the sight of Asuka in her plug suit being hauled along by two Valkyries: blood soaked crimson Amazons with collections of skulls on their belts and enormous axes in their hands that _looked exactly like the young woman they were carrying._

The two lesser daemons threw Asuka roughly to the floor, having no compassion to the girl who could have been their mistress if not for a quirk of fate. Shinji just stared in shock between the faces of the Valkyries and Asuka's.

Tzintchi finally let the last remnants of the blackness obscuring his face fade away so that Shinji could look upon his _own_ face upon the body of a monster.

Sneering, Tzintchi said, "Congratulations, you are now looking upon your face after you failed to save everyone you ever might have loved and cared for. You are looking upon your face after Third Impact. Know now the price of failure."

One of the Valkyries raised its double headed axe high while another held an unresisting Asuka down, her neck exposed for the killing stroke.

Somewhere along the downward descending arc of the blade there came an impassioned cry of "_NO!_"

The axe hit bare concrete and released a shower of sparks before Tzintchi let out a snort of derisive disgust. "Took you long enough to get your head out of your ass."

Shinji was cradling Asuka's limp, but unharmed, body, bawling his heart out at the horror he had almost witnessed. Squatting down so that he was level with him, Tzintchi said, "Kid, I fucking killed people for Asuka I loved her that much, and I know that somewhere in you there is enough of a spine that you could do it too if pushed. Now get up off your sorry ass and let loose all that shit you've got stored inside you. Trust me kid, whatever you've suffered, I've probably already had ten times worse, and I got over it."

Getting up, Tzintchi allowed himself to be lifted up by the same tendrils that had lowered him down from his Eva in the first place before pausing to say, "Oh yeah, if its any consolation, the we're taking most of the world ending pressure off you for the last three Angels. The things they keep attacking Tokyo-3 to get? Well we're going to _eat _them like takeout."

"Did anyone order the bucket of Lilith?" Mislaato asked while dragging the still crucified Angel behind her with one hand. "Or the urine soaked Gendo with the side order of Adam?" She then held up an absolutely terrified Ikari Gendo with her other hand.

"I already got my takeout," Asukhon noted while sitting on the remains of Zeruel and munching on a hunk of flank while its skull-like face adorned one of her horns.

"Then we shall be off," Tzintchi noted before glancing at the Lance of Longinus embedded in Lilith and saying, "Actually, just a second."

Hauling the Lance out, he then stuck it into the ground next to where Asuka and Shinji lay. Towering over them, he said, "I already have one of these, you can keep this one just in case the remaining Angels are too much."

Turning to the others, he said, "Alright, _now _let's go." With a wave of his hand he opened a portal out of the universe back to the one ruled by immature gods whereupon they would then hop back to their home reality with their prizes in tow.

Tzintchi helped Asukhon haul Zeruel through while Reigle aided Mislaato with Lilith. While they were heading through Asukhon commented, "That was awfully generous to give them the Lance."

"Oh, I have a plan with regards to that," Tzintchi noted slyly.

Rolling her eyes, Asukhon asked, "When do you _not _have a plan?"


	3. Diplomacy

**Chapter Two: Diplomacy**

The Outsider stood before their group, smiling faintly in a disconcerting way, waiting for them to come to a decision on his proposal. They all knew of his kind, and had thanked their lucky stars that until this moment it had been impossible to cross the barriers between realities like this. But now this creature had come to them.

By some fortunate stroke of luck the Outsider had come from a strange branch of its family tree so while it was a psychopathic killer with no concern for those that stood in the way of its goals, it actually didn't believe in maximum collateral damage as a goal and it seemed like it could be downright pleasant to its allies and followers.

Of course, it was still from a group known for pathological lying, so they didn't particularly trust it despite its protestations that it was really quite friendly.

But all of this left them in a rather unpleasant dilemma. This creature had, by all rights, achieved what it had by its own merits, and by their laws they had no real right to restrict its actions, especially since it did not exactly exist on the same plane as them. Similar, but not the same. Of course, it was also _evil. _And did they really want this thing and its fellows running about their back yard?

But then again so were their own cousins and so far they had not done anything to impede _their _actions. The Outsider had very carefully planned its presentation too. It knew that the current majority refused to intervene in the mortal realm even with their own existence threatened. It had also told them straight up that it was brutal and unforgiving to its enemies and courteous to its allies, and while they still did not quite believe the latter statement, they very much believed the former. While they could probably restrain the Outsider, the chaos in their own ranks would be devastating as the interventionist faction would take this as precedent and gain possibly enough popularity to form a majority.

They could not let that happen.

"Very well, we have considered your offer. So long as you stay out of our affairs on this plane you and your allies will be permitted leave to explore the mortal realms unhindered and unimpeded," the leader said to the Outsider.

"And should the mortals take to worshipping my master and his queens?" The Outsider asked.

There was a moment of hesitation before the words were said, "If it is their choice then you may lend them what aid you may desire."

"I thank you, my master will be most pleased to hear this news," the Outsider said happily before vanishing back to the realm where it resided in this universe.

All assembled wondered if they had just made a terrible mistake.

* * *

In her lifetime Shilash had witnessed many incredible things. She had seen fire rain down from the gods to punish the wicked. She had seen strange foreign men in odd clothes that seemed to make them blend into the trees come to her village to say that the deities she had known all her life were in fact false gods who had tricked them into worship with fancy devices. And then she had seen the deathly pale man walk into her village and say that all that refused to follow his words would be destroyed. Confused, by so many conflicting messages in such a short procession of years, the village had refused to give an answer.

And now Shilash was probably the last member of her people, a great plague having struck them down. She had been one of the last to suffer infection, and now she was crawling half delirious through the forest surrounding her village, her entire world on fire and in pain.

And now an angel knelt before her. Shilash's eyes could not focus, but she could see the radiate beauty of the creature before her, her skin milky white and glowing with the greenery of the forest. Shilash cried at the wonder of it all.

"Hello Shilash of Karadesh," the angel told her softly.

Shilash just smiled, it was all she could do.

"You have suffered much my dear, and you have endured it so well. You have lost everything, even hope, and yet you still keep moving forward. Your beauty stuns me," the angel said. Shilash would not say that she was beautiful now, what with the various ugly sores upon her body, but she was in no position to argue.

"Would you like to follow me and my mistress?" The angel asked.

Shilash nodded.

"Thank you," the angel said before leaning in close to kiss Shilash upon the forehead.

The most incredible sensation filled Shilash as catastrophic pain welled up within her such that she thought she was going to explode from the agony, but then it went up over a wall and she realized that while the pain was still there, nothing could compare to it anymore. She opened her eyes and despite the spoilt milk colouration that clouded them over, she could see, she could truly see for the first time in her life.

She had been blessed by the angel, the sickness within her body transformed from a curse into a blessing. What wonders her flesh now held and what compassion! Her once frail, selfish frame was now strong and durable enough to carry so much life. She would carry her own children in her womb, why not the children of flies in her flesh?

The angel of rot next to her smiled. "Welcome into the fold of Reigle sister, I am Lady Charity, designated servant in this galaxy."

"We must return to the village, there may still be others still alive who we tell of this blessed occurrence," Shilash said excitedly.

"Nothing is beyond Reigle or those touched by her gifts," the angel said with a smile. "Even those who have perished can still help in our struggle."

* * *

SG-1 had seen some appalling things since the arrival of the Priors in the Milky Way, but by far this scene topped anything they had ever witnessed. Immediately beyond the exit of the Stargate was a field of butchery that not even the Goa'uld had ever engaged in. Dozens of headless, flayed corpses had been strung up or nailed to crude supports as a very clear "Keep Out" sign. Watching from the monitors in the SGC of the MALP telemetry, the flagship team of humanity could only imagine the smell.

It was, however, Teal'c who first pointed out the obvious. "Do the followers of the Ori not burn those that defy them?"

Frowning, Mitchell said, "Yeah, the Big T is right. This doesn't fit the Ori MO at all. They don't leave warnings like this; they either convert a place or wipe it out."

His face deeply furrowed in shock and confusion, Daniel finally said to Walter, "Zoom in right… there." He then pointed to an area on the screen beneath one of the corpses. The technician obliged and the camera zoomed in on the spot Daniel designated, at which point they realized that something was very, very wrong.

Piled up in a small heap and soaked in blood and hacked up in places were several copies of the Book of Origin. This was not a warning from the Ori; it was a warning _for _the Ori.

"Someone obviously wasn't a fan of Origin," Mitchell commented dryly.

Frowning even more deeply now, Daniel pointed out, "The locals on P4X K79E are a peaceful, agrarian society dominated by the Goa'uld for millennia. They don't have the sort of society that would react this way."

"Teal'c could one of the various mercenary or rogue Jaffa groups have done this?" Mitchell asked.

"Unlikely, but possible. Such mutilations were seen as a waste of time by most of the Goa'uld when they already had most worlds terrified of them," the stoic Jaffa said clinically.

"Either way it looks like some outsiders came in after one of the Priors, killed anyone who looked to be turning to the Path of Origin and then left the bodies there as a message to the Priors and anyone looking to follow them," Carter said.

"Which means that the next time a Prior shows up the bastard will fall on the locals like a ton of bricks. We had better find out who these maniacs are before they do this again," Mitchell said before turning to General Landry and asking, "Sir, permission to take a team through the gate and see if we can get the locals to tell us who did this."

"I agree. We have to stop these people before they make things worse for everyone, us included, but you're taking SG-3 and SG-12 with you. Whoever did this had numbers and willingness to kill and mutilate those that stood in their way. You're taking plenty of firepower with you," General Landry told them.

"All right team, let's gear up," Mitchell said only somewhat enthusiastically.

* * *

The smell was indeed as bad as they had expected. Every member of the teams were veterans of combat, the original members of SG-1 more than probably any other human on the planet as they had been engaging the Goa'uld and now the Ori for the better part of a decade on an almost regular basis, but the smell of a battlefield was different from this. Decay had set in, but without the skin to act as a barrier to escape there was little bloating.

Strangely enough, despite the savagery inflicted upon the bodies, little blood was spilt upon the ground, indicating that the killing and mutilation had taken place elsewhere. Not entirely unusual. What was unusual was the fact that little blood had been smeared upon the various supports holding the bodies, indicating that perhaps the bodies had been actively drained before being strung and nailed up.

Slipping into the woods, the SG teams slowly and cautiously infiltrated forward towards the location of the nearest settlement on this world. While unlikely, there was still the possibility that whoever had done this was still here and…

All thoughts the SG team were having trailed off when they crested the final hill and discovered the region around them utterly deforested, the timber having been used to construct a massive wooden palisade about the village. People were toiling away to finish clearing the land, hauling up roots and digging trenches and burning wood to make charcoal. What had once a peaceful, agrarian village was rapidly being turned into a fortified camp bustling with industry.

"My… God…" Mitchell muttered while surveying it all.

"Should we make contact?" Carter asked.

"Some of the woodcutters have wandered out further and they don't appear to be supervised. We could probably approach one quietly and ask about what is going on," Daniel suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," Mitchell said before motioning for several of the Marines from SG-3 and 12 to accompany him and Daniel while the others stood on watch.

Selecting one man partially obscured by scrub that had yet to be cleared away, the two of them revealed themselves several metres away before Mitchell said to the woodcutter chopping enthusiastically, perhaps even over enthusiastically, at a tree, "Howdy."

The man whirled about in an instant, his axe held high and threateningly before his eyes caught up with his motion and he immediately stopped. This also let SG-1 get a good look at him for the first time, and to their horror a large, ragged series of cuts had been made on his forehead, forming an eight pointed star. The wounds looked fresh an untended to, for blood still trickled from partly formed scabs to clot upon his eyebrows.

Upon seeing them, the man immediately said, "The Tau'ri!" before dropping his axe and falling to his knees, crying out, "Blessed be the Lady!" He then ripped open his shirt and began clawing at his chest, revealing a series of brutal scars from previous similar wounds.

"Whoa!" Both Daniel and Mitchell cried out simultaneously while rushing to the man's aid. As they tried to restrain him in his frenzy, he fought back for a moment before he calmed down a bit and said, "Oh… I am sorry my friends, I was merely overjoyed to be chosen for this great honour. Yes, great honour."

"So you decided to start clawing yourself?" Mitchell asked incredulously.

"Bloodshed does please the Lady, although her envoy counsels against excess. Thought must be coupled with fury, which is why she welcomed the envoy of the King. He was the one who foretold of your coming! You are the changers of ways, the great hope for the galaxy! He said you would come, and any who met you were to welcome you as brothers! The Lady's envoy agreed! Come, come!" The woodcutter said, nearly working himself into a frenzy again.

"Uh… I'm not sure if we want to go into your village right away," Mitchell pointed out.

Nodding, the woodcutter said, "Yes, the King's envoy said that you would be wary and cautious. He said you would rightful fear an ambush, so any who met you should only bring you to the gates of the village, where you would be safe with your weapons against us and we could speak as equals. Is there one named Daniel Jackson amongst you?"

Frowning in bemusement and confusion, Daniel said, "That would be me."

Smiling broadly, the man looked ready to go into another fit before he said, "The King's envoy said to give you special regard, for you were amongst the wisest of all beings in the galaxy! Wiser than even the builders of the Chappa'ai!"

Looking both confused and slightly flattered, Daniel asked, "Why did the envoy say this?"

"Because you would not have let them into this galaxy," the man stated, sending a chill down Daniel's spine.

Before more questions could be asked the radio crackled to life and the commander of SG-3 said, "Lt. Colonel, we've got Prior activity at the village."

* * *

The Prior stood before the defiant village in a nearly apocalyptic rage. The only thing that kept him from destroying this entire place outright was the fact that whenever he tried to open the minds of these people to find out who had done this outrage, something began whispering blasphemies into his mind, telling him lies about the Ori.

Raising his staff high into the air, he shouted out, "Who has done this?"

The gates to the village opened and out stalked a young woman wearing primitive bronze armour and holding a wicked looking axe. What skin was visible was coloured bright red, and sticking out from beneath her horned helm was a long banner of vermillion hair. Strangely enough, the only thing that was not some shade of red or bronze was a solid black band of iron about her neck that appeared to have been permanently welded on. She smiled wickedly at the Prior, revealing teeth sharpened to razor points before she said, "I am Lady Justice, envoy for my Queen to these people, and I convinced them to turn away from your false path. Some were not so willing to cooperate and sadly the conflict grew violent. We disposed of their corpses as is our new custom."

Raising his staff, the Prior said, "All those who refuse to walk the Path of Origin must be destroyed."

"Before you attack, could you say it?" Justice suddenly asked.

The Prior looked confused for a moment, hesitating at the strange request.

Rolling her eyes, Justice said, "You know, that catch phrase you guys use with that hollow, monotone voice. I want to hear it."

"Hallowed are the Ori?" The Prior asked in confusion at the insanity of the woman before him. He knew that those who rejected the Path of Origin were sick animals in need of putting down, but this was a new low.

"Not like _that! _You need more gravitas, you need to say it like you mean it, like you're about to commit genocide and need the empty words to soothe what's left of your humanity lest you think about the consequences of your actions," Justice said indignantly.

Now the Prior needed to say the words just to focus himself away from the madness. Lifting his staff, he let awful white light leak from the crystal as he intoned, "Hallowed are the Ori."

"Awesome! _BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!_" Justice cried as she leapt into the air.


	4. Introductions

**Chapter Three: Introductions**

Whatever the Prior and the SG teams watching had thought was going to happen most emphatically did not. The Prior's staff flashed with white light for a moment before Lady Justice was completely unaffected, her axe flashing through the air to cleave the staff effortlessly in two and remove one of the Prior's hands. Bright red blood spurted through the air and stained the Prior's robes as he fell to the ground in complete shock at this absolutely unexpected turn of events.

Lady Justice grabbed the Prior by the hair and hauled him not quite up to his feet, but up far enough that all of his weight was hanging by the scalp.

"The Ori are weak and you are a fool for following them!" Justice told him as she raised her axe high.

For the first time since he had been chosen, the Prior knew fear. All the powers he tried against this abomination did nothing, and whenever he tried to reach out for aid from the Ori he only heard mocking laughter and a voice telling him that his gods were not there.

"_SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!_" Justice screamed out at the top of her lungs before bringing her axe down hard on the Prior's neck, severing his head with a spray of blood. His body began to spontaneously combust, but the flames could not reach the head, instead twisting away from the hand that held it as if the fire was afraid of Lady Justice.

Considering what had just happened, it probably _was._

Holding the slightly charred and very bloody high above her head, Justice let out a terrific bellow that was joined by all of the villagers watching. She also held the severed stump of the neck above her face so that as the remaining blood drained from the skull out of the severed blood vessels it poured down upon her face and there was little doubt that she was drinking the blood of the Prior.

The SG teams looked a little green at the sight before them, especially the way the villagers seemed to be ritually mutilating themselves in their victory frenzy. The woodcutter they had found finally lost it in the throes of religious ecstasy and ran out into the open field, crying out enthusiastically, "The Tau'ri are here! Blessed day, the Tau'ri are here!"

"Well there goes the element of surprise," Mitchell mutters darkly before he waves for SG-1 and half of SG-3 to get up and follow, saying, "Look casual boys and girls."

Walking out of the tree line, the SG teams causally walked along the scrub land towards the woman that had just taken apart a Prior without breaking a sweat. Admittedly, she appeared to be somewhat specialized towards killing Priors as she was using an axe and wearing antique armour, but she was frightfully fast and strong and if she got amongst them it could quickly turn into a bloodbath before they could bring their guns to bear.

As they drew nearer, Lady Justice lowered the severed head and nodded courteously to them, saying, "Ah! The famous SG-1, we have been expecting you."

Coming to a stop at what was a relatively easily defensible position, the SGC personnel spread out into a neat military formation that would maximize their ability to bring fire upon attackers from the direction of the village, especially Lady Justice, while still keeping an eye on other avenues of attack.

Clearing his throat, Mitchell then said, "You'll forgive us if we would prefer to stay out of range of your axe for the time being."

Laughing heartily with a fierce, throaty bark, Lady Justice said, "Of course not! You are no fools, we expect nothing less." Tossing the Prior's head casually to one of the villagers, she said, "Here, put this with the others."

Slinging her axe across her back, Justice then removed her helmet, revealing the fact that the horns were not in fact attached to the helmet but grew directly out of her forehead, which caused the SGC members to realize that her skin was at the very least dyed red rather than painted. Her eyes were little orbs of red and black. But other than the eyes and the teeth and the horns and the colours she looked like a normal young woman who should probably being going to school at some nice university rather than tearing apart Priors and drinking their blood. It was distinctly more creepy and disconcerting for the SG teams than if she had been some sort of monster. Monsters they could deal with.

"While it's not exactly of an introduction, you seem to know us already, and we heard your name during that little spat with the Prior, so I guess with that out of the way, the obvious question is how exactly you did that," Mitchell asked.

"Of course you would ask that," Justice said with a smile. She then touched the iron band about her neck and said, "My Queen made this for me before she sent me on this mission, to protect me from the powers of the Priors."

"Who is your queen exactly?" Daniel asked.

"She is the Lady of War, Asukhon," Justice said, the name somehow seeming like it should have a crash of lightning and the panicked neighing of horses accompanying it.

"Never heard of her," Mitchell said.

Grinning lopsidedly, Justice said, "Until the Ori invasion, she preferred to keep a low profile."

"She's an Ancient, isn't she?" Daniel asked bluntly.

"Not quite, but if you wish to think of her as an ascended being, then that is one way of thinking of her. Or any of the others," Justice explained.

"Others?" Mitchell asked.

"My master and two others share power with Lady Asukhon," a man said as he languidly strolled out of the village. He was an odd, Asiatic looking young man wearing long blue and gold coloured robes and an unruly mop of black hair framing a faintly smiling face. A strange aura of almost perceptible static and vertigo seemed to surround him, as if there was something very wrong with him but to actually place what exactly that might be was impossible.

"And you would be?" Mitchell asked.

The young man said something… or cleared his throat.

"Gesundheit," Mitchell said.

"That was my name," the young man said.

"Oh," Mitchell stated.

"Technically Lady Justice's name is equally difficult to pronounce, but it means justice so she just went with it. Mine means forethought, which doesn't quite have the same ring, so you may call me Prometheus," the man said.

"Prometheus, right. So you've got Lady Justice here and you mentioned two others?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes, Lady Charity and Lady Compassion. They are currently on other worlds performing their own missions. In fact, we all have separate missions and for the time being we have little interest in communicating with each other, so I can't exactly say where they are," Prometheus explained.

Raising an eyebrow, Daniel asked, "Then why are you with Justice here?"

Grinning broadly, Prometheus said, "I was waiting for you to come here. Lady Justice is rather blunt and obvious, and would not fail to get your attention."

Justice looked down at herself for a moment before she grinned and said, "I try."

"And you want what with us exactly?" Mitchell asked suspiciously, ignoring the little by-play from Justice.

"I have a gift for the Tau'ri," Prometheus stated before calmly reaching into his robe and pulling out a small flattened egg shaped object that sits in his palm. Pressing a button on the side caused the top to fold open and for a series of holograms to begin to play, showing a series of schematics for weapons that looked remarkably like something produced on Earth.

"What is it exactly?" Mitchell asked cautiously.

"Detailed plans for building coherent light weapons of sufficient power to be useful to you," Prometheus stated. "Would you like me to come over and hand it to you, or would you prefer I stay back and let one of the villagers bring it to you?"

"I hope you don't mind if we take the second option," Mitchell said.

Beckoning to one of the closer villagers over to him, Prometheus passed off the object and the man, who appeared to have ripped off one of his own ears recently, rushed over to SG-1, absolutely thrilled to have been honoured with the task. He quickly handed it off to a waiting Carter before scurrying back to his fellows, who were all beaming proudly.

Giving Carter a few moments to look over the device for any traps and then look through the schematics within, Mitchell then asked, "So what's it look like Sam?"

It took a little while for Carter to absorb the knowledge, but one she realized exactly what she was looking at she exclaimed quietly, "Holy Hannah! Cam, these schematics detail how to completely revolutionize the way we use lasers. These weapons are better in every possible way. They'll hit harder, shoot faster and straighter, have more ammunition, and are more durable than any other weapon we've ever encountered in the galaxy. Even the power cells are more efficient and rugged than most weapons their size would warrant. And its not just the schematics for the weapons… it's the schematics for the tooling to make the weapons and detailed theory behind the operation and… wow… just… if we got these ten years ago, before we found the Stargate we could have begun production in under a year. With all of it together… Cam, we don't even need to _hide_ most of this, it's well within our technological level while still being better than anything else we've seen on the subject."

"I see you like it," Prometheus stated. "The technology comes from a civilization that was very concerned with making robust, reliable weapons for its troops. I have access to designs for other, more powerful weapons, but I fear that you will have to negotiate for those."

"Who are these people?" Daniel asked.

"That is a very long story, but the short answer is that they no longer exist. And no, our masters and mistresses had nothing to do with why their civilization no longer exists. They simply inherited the knowledge from the last survivors of those people," Prometheus explained.

"Okay… so let's say we wanted to negotiate with you folks, want exactly do you want from us?" Mitchell inquired.

"Oh, not much really. The promise of religious freedom to practice our ways and convert anyone willing to our beliefs would be nice. Of course, we would not break any laws in the practice of our worship," Prometheus explained.

"Unless of course they start it," Justice pointed out.

"Now Justice, you are the rightly appointed leader of this village and the Prior and those that followed the Path of Origin threatened members of the village. By all accepted standards of law you were merely carrying out your duty as the leader of a sovereign government to protect those under your rule," Prometheus said. Daniel and Mitchell frowned at that little speech as it had obviously been intended for them, while Carter was still busy looking through the schematics for the laser weapons.

Teal'c however was the one to respond, "I do not believe that the Tau'ri or the Free Jaffa will be comfortable with another religion spreading in the galaxy after the Goa'uld and Ori have shown us the horrors of false gods."

"Indeed," Prometheus said, making them all wonder just exactly how much he knew about them. He then added on, "But we have power and wish to spread it for the benefit of all in the conflict against the Ori. That will bring others to us; others who will wish to emulate us and will want to know of our religion. Surely the Tau'ri have been asked to spread their religion to those they have liberated before?"

SG-1 shifted uncomfortably at that. While as the first contact team they tended to move around too much, the issue had come up far too often with the diplomatic teams working with local populations afterwards. It was a touchy subject and official policy was still hazy as to handle it. So far there had been no proselytizing but try as they might to avoid the subject, there were several populations that had converted over to earth religions- or approximations of them from what they had learned through inquiries to lay people- that had sprung up around the galaxy.

Fortunately Teal'c came to their rescue. "Indeed they have been asked, but they have not made it their mission to do so."

"Neither will we, we simply feel that in times of religious extremism and fear we would prefer to ask first rather than risk unfortunate misunderstandings later," Prometheus replied. He then added on, "And that is just a formality request in any event, a symbolic exchange of good wills. What I truly wish to obtain is industrial capacity from the Tau'ri and Free Jaffa to help uplift the worlds that fall under our protection. We have access to much knowledge, but not the capacity to use the majority of it to the full extent."

"So you want us to build your laser guns for you, and in turn we get to keep some of them," Mitchell summarized.

"That would be one way of looking at it," Prometheus admitted. "But those negotiations are for another day, when you have your diplomats around. For now though, please take my gift as the gesture of good will that it is. You can contact me on this world whenever you wish to begin the haggling."

As the SG teams retreated from the village back to the Stargate, Justice asked, "Well?"

"They'll do what we need them to do. Even if the individual members of SG-1 are smart enough to realize how evil we are, the governments are too short sighted and greedy to refuse the technology we have to offer," Prometheus said with a grin as he dropped the illusion that kept them from opening fire on him on sight for looking like Anubis.


	5. Games

**Chapter Four: Games**

Tzintchi watched impassively as Asukhon moved another three Prior pieces off the board and put them on her scoring table, while meanwhile Reigle continued to add zombie pawns to her forces.

"You're overstretching your ability to command your forces Reigle," Tzintchi pointed out.

Grinning rottenly, Reigle asked, "Are you saying I should spawn more overlords?"

Rolling his many eyes, Tzintchi replied, "Very funny, but we're not going to that reality for the time being. You still have to find a good place for our little British Invasion game."

"Asukhon is still bickering with me over that one little place because even though there is all this disease she argues that because they're _angry _diseased maniacs they should fall under her overview," Reigle said.

"You're just bitter that I'm winning this game," Asukhon replied as she tallied her score.

"Priors are cheap. Sooner or later they're going to drop a battleship on your head or throw a bomb through a gate and then where will you be?" Tzintchi pointed out.

"I'm not the only one with plans my dear," Asukhon stated slyly. "Again, you're just bitter because you're currently in dead last."

"Quite. But when I get my agent on to Earth then by the rules I can send another one into Pegasus, _alone._ Not only that, but the Tau'ri forces have some of the best warships in the galaxy, and the SGC has some hugely high scoring pieces as personnel. Plus the industries and population of Earth makes it a lucrative position to build an army from," Tzintchi pointed out.

"He's teching up instead of rushing like you two," Mislaato said as she moved her piece amongst several pyramids and stalks of corn. "As am I, but I'm moving faster than him."

"Speaking of technology, we need to test the _Stiletto _at some point. Do we enter it here or in some other location?" Tzintchi asked.

Frowning, Asukhon said, "It is only a frigate in need of a shakedown cruise, and this reality has weapons capable of damaging it. We will eventually enter the _Stiletto _into this game, but for now we need something a bit easier to check for any potential problems. How's about… _here._"

Asukhon waved her hand and the board shifted. Looking at it, Tzintchi frowned and said, "That's a lot of gods in play."

"They don't care," Asukhon said with a shrug.

"They should be condemned in any case," Reigle said quietly.

"Oh?" Tzintchi said while examining all the pieces, a small grin forming on his mouths.

"They have not the decency to call their own apathy what it truly is, and they confuse inaction with righteousness. It annoys me that they think of themselves as followers of you when they truly belong to me," Reigle explained.

Laughing at that, Tzintchi said, "Ah, lovely sentiments as always dear."

"Besides, these guys will be easy enough to crack while still offering just enough challenge to warm up on, which is to say that we will massacre them without it being entirely effortless," Asukhon said.

"Always with the massacres my dear, always with the massacres. Very well, we shall test the _Stiletto _in this reality. Shall we be business-like or approach it like a game as with the others?" Tzintchi asked.

"A game dears, a game. The _Stiletto _should be able to take on fleets of nearly any size in that reality, but where is the fun and learning in that? No, if we truly wish to practice in anticipation for the C'tan, we must hone our skills appropriately. Let us pretend that the warships of this reality are equivalent to ours ton for ton and act accordingly. The game will to be to score as much as possible before a final battle is forced, one where the _Stiletto _would be outgunned if it were here. At that point we end the charade and leave that reality and the shattered hulks of its space ships behind," Mislaato suggested.

"I like it," Tzintchi said.

"You do both realize that ton for ton the _Stiletto _out masses most fleets in that reality with its armour, let alone the rest of its equipment," Asukhon pointed out.

"It will be a big battle," Mislaato said with a shrug.

"It might boot the gods of that place out of their complacency," Reigle said.

Shrugging, Mislaato said, "We'll just promise to leave them alone, they all seem rather isolationist. Hmmm… they could even prove useful to our game. The Necrontyr can call upon their gods to help them; we should not leave such things out of the equation."

"Agreed," Tzintchi said. "Also, despite the fact that they have been chomping at the bit for actual combat, neither Toji nor Kensuke will be assigned to this mission. Despite the low risk, they are too important at this stage of the game."

"Agreed," the three goddesses said.

Tzintchi picked up a small model of one of the ships from this reality. It was such a fragile thing really, but by the standards of the locals it had done much and earned itself a legendary name. He then drew forth from the ether a model of the first ship to exit the slipways and compared them. By their standards the _Stiletto _was just that, a thin blade meant for stabbing at the kidneys of the enemy when they were not looking. To those it faced it would be a behemoth nearly twice as long as their ships and nearly a hundred times as massive.

The fight would be interesting to watch indeed.


	6. Launch

**Chapter Five: Launch**

The _Stiletto _was a marvel of engineering, designed and built within the first twenty years since the ascendance of the gods as a test bed for the merging of Imperial, Eldar, Chaotic, and Angelic technologies and systems. While no where near as cobbled together as say the construction of the _Prometheus _by the Tau'ri in a neighbouring universe, to a certain extent the only thing holding the damn thing together was a concerted, active raping of the laws of physics by various daemons and a bit of the WAAAGH inherited from Gork and Mork. It was, at the moment, an unsightly blend of adamantium, wraithbone, and biological components, at least to the sensibilities of the builders. Outsiders with no knowledge of what an ugly kludge it was might be fooled though.

The ship's name was well deserved as it was long and thin by the standards of the ships to come, but it was still a little over a kilometre and a half long and approximately two hundred metres wide, although the armoured, triangular bow of the ship was a bit wider than the rest of the ship. There had in fact been some discussion as to whether or not to name the ship the _Dart _or the _Arrow _before the _Stiletto _had won out. The enormous ram prow was smooth and sharp except for the torpedo launchers and the Eldar pulse lance they had managed to fit within that ran nearly the entire length of the ship. Behind the ram prow the main body of the ship was a collection of armoured "ribs" that added structural support while giving some protection to the various weapons emplacements mounted along the sides, before terminating in the bulge at the back that was the main drive systems.

All in all, the ship carried an absolutely ridiculous amount of equipment, one of the biggest reasons the designers were unhappy with it. It was a frigate with a punch equivalent to a light cruiser. Okay, the torpedoes were undersized, and the various technologies employed allowed for a great deal of miniaturization, but the thing was still over equipped for its size. It had shields _and _holoprojectors, and it carried the blessings of all four gods. The thing was absurd.

Then again, when the gods demanded a test bed for the blending of the various technologies, you didn't exactly tell them no. At least they had been reasonable enough to wait for the testing of the nova cannon until the shipyards were capable of building ships of a more reasonable size to mount that sort of thing.

Of course, the presence of reliable Warp taps in the form of greatly modified S2 engines, jokingly called S3 engines, and a plasma reactor meant that they could just support the power needs of the engines, the pulsar lance, and the shields. All other systems drew their energy from individual S2 engines or clusters of S2 engines for some of the more power intensive systems. The one thing the engineers all felt happy about on the project was the fact that now that they had the S2 engines working reliably their high power to volume ratio meant that they could put a lot of back up systems in place. The _Stiletto _could take a tremendous amount shit kicking and still keep firing.

And that was _before _the biological components were factored in. While mostly hidden from the rigours of space, the fact that the bio components were of Angelic origin and reinforced by Reigle meant that they could take nearly as much punishment as the wraithbone components, if not the adamantium ones, and the regeneration meant that damage control to those components was automatic and frightfully fast.

The interior of the ship was of course the sort of nightmare one would expect from a ship built to the glory of Chaos gods, featuring the sort of techno-organic feel that would scare crap out of most people. With all the S2 and S3 engines drawing energy from the Warp, Tzintchi had found it trivial to warp the interior in a non-Euclidean way that made anyone not permitted aboard doomed to become hopelessly lost. Mislaato had produced a haunting psychic siren that would not only mess with the heads of anyone trying to get inside, but with most people, especially psychics, within about a light second of the ship. Aside from strengthening the entire ship with her own brand of endurance, Reigle had also made sure that all the organic components could excrete her own brand of the Destroyer Plague. Aside from ensuring the general blood thirst of the gunners, Asukhon had made sure that the security and boarding teams were all dedicated to her and thus would be walking blenders in the close combat of ship boarding action.

The crew, aside from the various daemons bound to the structure of the ship, were all drawn from the cream of Earth's crop, including a squad of Space Marines from each of the six extant chapters, giving the _Stiletto _a little over a half company's worth of the best soldiers Earth had to offer, as well as covering most of the specializations. The Sons of Toji and the Sons of Kensuke had each sent a veteran tactical squad; the Bearers of Reigle had sent their only Terminator squad; the Reavers of Asukhon had sent an assault squad, not that they had many marines that _weren't _geared towards some form of assault; the Whips of Mislaato had sent a heavy weapons squad; and the Heralds of Tzintchi had sent a psychic squad.

All in all, the ship was such massive fucking overkill for its first assigned mission that the captain found it downright funny.

"So these are the things that the gods wish us to practice upon?" The captain asked.

"Yes ma'am… err… sir… uh… what exactly should I call you?" The rating who had handed the data slate to the captain asked in some confusion.

Chuckling, Captain Rong-Arya said, "The convention is to use feminine pronouns to comply with the host body. Now, return to your duties."

Thirty-one years ago in the remnants of post Second Impact Shanghai a poor family gave birth to the girl Rong Xun, who was just starting to be recognized by the government as a child prodigy when Third Impact occurred. While her education initially faltered in the ensuing disaster from the loss of two in three people and she nearly perished from starvation or violence several times, she managed to perserve and survive until the first armies of the gods had stormed across the Sea of Japan two years later and pacified the region.

As she cowered in the remnants of a bombed out hovel, soldiers and daemons and Marines massacring the "armies" of the warlords who had taken control of the city, the great god Tzintchi had himself identified her as a psyker and had her brought back to Japan for training with her gifts.

Around the same time the only officer in the Indian Army who had seen both Second and Third Impact and lived to tell the tale decided to officially announce that he was throwing his lot in with the new gods. A cagey old bastard by that time, Arya Prayang received great favour from the deities for not only making the right choice, but preserving much of the industry and population under his area of control by not engaging in petty fighting like so many other places on the planet. For that he was elevated to the rank of Divine Marshal Arya, Governor of the Province of India.

When he had died ten years later due to long term complications of a wound suffered during the Unification Wars, instead of being consumed by one of the gods, his soul was instead elevated to the level of Daemon Prince. For a time he was quite happy with his new existence, but soon the itch to get back into the material world for an extended period began to prick at him and he asked to bind with a host.

Around the same time the now adult Rong volunteered for the daemonhost program to further her own career as an officer in the military. While her initial application requested that she be bound to a Black Pharaoh or possibly a Valkyrie, when told that a former Grand Marshal turned Daemon Prince was interested in binding with her because of her scores, she had immediately jumped at the opportunity.

The process had been painful for both involved and dangerous for Rong, but in the end Rong-Arya emerged, thrice bound daemonhost, with both minds left intact and functional. Rong was a brilliant tactician and skilled precog, while Arya carried enormous reserves of power and more cunning and logistical insight than most other people on the planet.

The saying went that old age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm every day. Of course, no one had ever anticipated the utter lethality of the _combination._ Of course the transcendent intellect and the ability to see the future weren't exactly hindrances in the whole officer material thing. At first Arya had been a bit annoyed by the fact that he pretty much had to go through officer school and climb the rankings again, but once he realized how much fun screwing with superior officers was he got along just fine with the system.

And now Rong-Arya was a captain aboard the first ship to be built on Earth, a great honour and opportunity and if they could accomplish this mission properly then they would surely be on the fast track to become the first admiral in the fleet. Also, with the rise in rank and skill had come the unshackling of the bindings upon them as Rong's body grew powerful enough to contain Arya's power. At long last with the promotion to captain had the last binding been removed from the pair.

Now they sat upon the command throne of the _Stiletto _and watched as the final preparations for launch were made with burning eyes. Smirking, they said, "Lieutenant Striker, please adjust power flow to the number four engine down by 0.4."

"Yes ma'am… huh… we were just starting to get a slight resonance in that engine," the piloting officer reported.

"I know. Please make a note and have it sent to high command. They want to know about everything that happens, especially potential equipment problems," Rong-Arya ordered.

"Done ma'am. Final docking clamps are now away, and we have clearance to leave the yards," Lieutenant O'Hare, the communications officer, said.

"Excellent. Bring us out of dock with manoeuvring thrusters and then engage main engines at 1 until the yards are clear of our engine wash, at which point I want us brought up to 75 thrust," Rong-Arya ordered.

"Aye-aye ma'am," Striker acknowledged as he fired the manoeuvring thrusters that accelerated the frigate at a gentle 0.1G for two seconds before cutting off and letting inertia carry the ship the rest of the way out of the slipway that had birthed it, carrying it out over the brilliant blue orb that was Earth. Once free from the chaotic jumble of ever growing space stations and work platforms the enormous conical exhaust ports at the back of the ship began to glow a weak blue-white as charged particles were hurled away at ludicrous speeds. Almost immediately the ship leapt forward and began to rise away from the planet.

A few short minutes later Lieutenant Striker reported, "We are now clear of all orbital structures, increasing power to 75."

Where the thrusters had only been glowing feebly before, now they flared into brilliant life and the _Stiletto _shot off like a shell fired from a cannon, accelerating rapidly towards the speed of light before relativity started to kick in.

"Message received from the science ship _Iliad. _They send their greetings to us and praise the gods for what we represent," O'Hare reported.

"Send thanks to them and apologize that we cannot assist with the repatriation," Rong-Arya ordered, causing a grin from those in the know. There had been much talk of asteroid mining for ship construction in the past two decades, but first they had to get the science of nudging about the huge chunks of rock down first. Thus the _Iliad _had been given the task of figuring out how to do that by moving 617 Patroclus out of the Trojan node and into the Greek one, and visa versa for 624 Hektor as part of a "repatriation" project that would finally end a little bit of nomenclature confusion amongst the Trojan asteroids about Jupiter.

"All systems functioning properly captain," Striker reported.

"Very well, slowly bring us up to full thrust, I want to see how the engines handle it," Rong-Arya ordered.

"Aye-aye, ma'am. Bringing us up to 80 thrust," Striker said as he entered the order to increase thrust. As the ship continued to increase its acceleration, all went well until they reached 95 thrust, at which point the deck plates began to rattle ominously.

"Report!" Rong-Arya ordered.

"We have a resonance build up in engine four," Striker replied.

Frowning, Rong-Arya thought for a moment before they said, "Increase power by 0.5 every ten seconds until the resonance ceases or we reach full power, at which point kill all power to the engines."

A little less than a minute later and the shaking stopped along with all rumble from the engines. As power had been increased the shaking had only become worse until finally all power was cut.

"We cannot engage our engines to full power, this I find troubling, especially as our mission will take us into combat. I want to know not just why engine four is resonating, but why _only _engine four is having this problem while on low power idle or at 95 power or greater," the captain demanded.

"The engineers are already working on it ma'am," Striker commented as he poured over the various read outs at his station.

"Message has been received from high command. They note that we have stopped due to engine trouble, but say that the _Stiletto _is already overkill for the mission and 90 engine power should be sufficient," O'Hare reported.

Precognitive superiors were always amusing, as Rong-Arya liked to show. Nodding, they said, "Very well, the engineers have three hours to examine engine four before sending off their findings to high command for further analysis. After that point we will carry on with the mission."

Three hours later and a hole of sickening blackness opened up and consumed the _Stiletto_, carrying it into the Warp where the will of the gods opened a path through the multiverse to their destination.

By some coincidence or malicious design on the part of the gods, the _Stiletto _dropped out of the Warp four hours later almost on top of one of the few ships in the universe bigger than it as it was making a routine stop to gather fuel for its reactors from a gas giant.

"Huh… I thought those guys weren't supposed to be in the operational sector of space. I hope we didn't drop out of the Warp in the wrong location," Rong-Arya commented.

"Star charting report that we are in the correct sector," Lieutenant Burke, the navigator, reported.

"Then these boys are far from home," Rong-Arya noted while examining the read-outs for what would have been considered an ork warship with odd aesthetics back home. It was like a huge conglomeration of piping and conduits and cables and other such things packed together into a cube three kilometres long on each side.

"Receiving transmission ma'am, frequency modulated radio signal with probable visual and audio components. Looks like we don't have compatible communications gear otherwise," O'Hare said.

"Can we translate the signal into something useful?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Audio only for now, still working on the video component," O'Hare said.

"Let's hear what they have to say then," Rong-Arya replied.

There was a brief moment of static before an oddly modulated voice said, "_We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ship. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile._"

Raising an eyebrow, Rong-Arya commented, "Confident little bastards aren't they?" Thinking for a moment, they summon forth their full daemonhost might before announcing, "**We are Chaos. Raise your shields and give us a good fight. We will sacrifice your souls to our gods. Your culture will burn. Resistance is amusing.**"

There was a short pause before the reply arrived, "_Chaos is irrelevant. Fighting is irrelevant. Souls are irrelevant. Gods are irrelevant. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated._"

"They are powering shields and weapons ma'am," Lieutenant Xavier, the sensor officer, noted.

Dropping the creepy echo, Rong-Arya ordered, "Full power to weapons; bring us about to line up the pulsar lance on them."

The bridge crew immediately snapped into action, the ship thrumming into combat mode as shells were loaded, capacitors charged, and torpedoes were readied. Hymns and chants rose up amongst the crew as promises of spilt blood were made to the gods. The various daemons bound within the systems began to cackle with glee as the prospects for slaughter grew.

"Shields are at maximum strength, holofields are active, all tubes and cannons are loaded, and all beam weapons are charged," Commander Ichiro-Faust, the tactical officer and a fellow daemonhost, reported smartly.

"Fire the pulsar lance, half charge, and surprise me as to where exactly you hit. I want them asymmetrical," Rong-Arya commanded.

The entire ship shook as the massive laser weapon fired, impacting on one of the sides and moving up and over, cutting through the shields and hull as if they weren't even there until eventually an entire corner of the cube simply broke off. Secondary explosions wracked both pieces, the detached corner eventually exploding into shrapnel, while the rest of the cube managed to get the fires and detonating munitions and reactors under control.

"They appear to be attempting to affect repairs ma'am," Xavier noted.

"Amusing. O'Hare, please open a channel," Rong-Arya said idly. Once he gave them the nod, they said, "**We overpower you. Prepare to die.**"

"_Power is irrelevant. Death is irrelevant. We will adapt. You will serve us. Resistance is futile,_" the Borg replied.

"Do they have shields active?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Negative," Xavier replied.

"Commander Ichiro-Faust, please ask the Bearers to board them via teleporter and forcibly shut them up," Rong-Arya ordered.

"With pleasure ma'am," Ichiro-Faust said with a grin. Faust was a daemon of Asukhon after all, so the pair greatly enjoyed slaughter.

Ten minutes later O'Hare said, "Report from the Bearer squad ma'am. They say that combat there is like fighting civilians… arthritic civilians at that apparently. They grow bored and wish to return to the ship before they waste too much time."

Rolling their eyes, Rong-Arya said, "Very well. Please turn to present the starboard broadside, and when the Bearers are back aboard obliterate these pests."

As the bridge officers went about their duties Xavier reported, "Ma'am, I believe we have identified their method of communication, it appears to rely on sending signals through what we thought was a useless interface layer between real space and the Warp, a sort of subspace if you will. There is a huge amount of bandwidth being sent towards the other side of the galaxy, although it will probably take several years to arrive."

"So they're trying to tell their friends all of our little secrets are they? Well, that will end in a second," Rong-Arya noted before looking at Ichiro-Faust.

"The Bearers are aboard ma'am," the tactical officer stated.

"Fire the starboard broadside then," Rong-Arya stated.

In an instant dozens of gigatons converged upon the cube, which had yet to bring its shields back online after the lance strike. It was sitting motionless relative to the _Stiletto_, meaning that it had absolutely no chance to avoid the awesome destructive forces hurtling towards it. For a brief instant there was a bright light, and then there was nothing but a rapidly expanding and thinning cloud of plasma tens of thousands of kilometres across.

"Let's get out of here then, shall we?" Rong-Arya said in a bored tone. "Set course for the designated target and then enter the Warp."

A few minutes later the _Stiletto _disappeared from the now uninhabited system in a flash of unreality.


	7. Visitations

**Chapter Six: Visitations**

Captain Jean Luc Picard ran his hand over the armrest of his chair somewhat wistfully. While grateful for having the seat, it still wasn't quite _his_. The _Enterprise-E _was a fine ship, but Picard certainly knew what Montgomery Scott had meant when he said that this was not _his _ship. His thoughts however turned in upon themselves as he realized that despite the fact that he had still not worn his own character into the ship yet, the most important thing towards making it home was the family that lived in it, and for that he thanked all of his lucky stars that the casualties from Veridian III had been as light as they had been.

"Sir, there is a message from Starfleet for you, coded private," the communications officer on watch at the time announced.

Nodding, Picard said, "I will take it in my ready room then. Riker, you have the watch."

Standing up, Picard went moved just off the bridge to his ready room. At the moment the door sealed behind him, there was a flash of white light and Picard felt his head and shoulders slump as he realized that no family was quite complete without the annoying uncle who showed up from time to time to disrupt the regular order.

"What is it this time Q?" Picard asked as his ready room chair spun about to reveal the impish cosmic being. Picard's expression however transmuted from annoyance to apprehension and fear when he saw Q's appearance.

Q was wearing the old standard Starfleet captain's uniform, but it seemed inexplicably more sinister than it ever had before. The red of the uniform seemed off, almost as if it were achieved by soaking the fabric in blood rather than dye. The collar pips had also been changed, the circles replaced by small, abstract symbols that had the vague appearance of skulls. The communicator was completely different, an eight-pointed star that somehow seemed to squirm about if Picard took too long to look at it.

But worst of all was Q's face. Gone was the near persistent smile, the look upon the face that said that Q was really just playing some big joke upon the puny humans. He had only ever looked like this when he was about to put humanity on trial.

Q said in the sort of dead serious voice, "I really must apologize for some of my earlier words Picard, humans aren't quite as bad as I might have implied."

Frowning, Picard said, "Somehow I a get the feeling that you have more to say than that."

"I do, but the Continuum wishes to stay out of what is to come, and only our prior 'friendship' lets me get away with giving you a rather vague warning. Now, while intentional vagueness for the purposes of giving you _just _enough information to make it look useful in retrospect _is _part of my style, this time I would actually like to give you more to go upon if not for other circumstances," Q said.

Picard felt something like a block of ice drop in his gut. This was completely uncharacteristic of Q and the Continuum, and while he was certain they would deny it, it almost sounded as if they were afraid.

"We are afraid, although not in a way you would understand," Q said, plucking the thought from Picard's mind and causing him to feel even more ill at ease, a sort of terror creeping up his spine at the thought of anything scaring the Q Continuum.

Elaborating, Q said, "There are things out there that you cannot imagine, things that would break your mind to even catch a glimpse of. Even if your crude senses were capable of perceiving the full glory of a Q, your mind would be incapable of understanding what you see. Most beings like this are… while not exactly benevolent, they see little to no need in interacting with lesser beings, or with other such groups. And then there are the others…"

Q frowned and then gestured to the computer terminal integrated into Picard's desk. "There is a message waiting for you here that will lead you into a situation that will test everything you and humanity are made of, that will lead you to question everything you think you know. Not all that lurks between the stars will lead to some grand adventure where the sides are clearly delineated by black and white. And not all times will you find yourself standing on the side of the line you thought you were. Good bye Jean Luc, I hope we meet again."

With a flash Q disappeared, leaving Picard feeling numb and weak about the extremities. He tottered over to his chair and dropped heavily into it. In all his encounters with Q, he had never left it with such a feel of doom. Q played pranks or tried to discourage him from what test was set before him, but there had always been a sense that they had what they needed to overcome. Q had not seemed certain that even _he _could deal with what he warned of.

Starfleet had known of various entities like the Q that wielded powers high above them for centuries, but they all seemed to have their own version of the Prime Directive that kept them out of the affairs of younger species. What if there was another group that did _not _behave in such a way? The thought of Q without restraint or even his own twisted sense of right and wrong sent shivers up and down Picard's spine.

It took him a few moments to compose himself, before he felt the old courage began to seep back in. Q was a trickster with an often malicious bent to his pranks or trials, but so far they had always overcome. They _had _to overcome; there was simply nothing else to do. Time flowed on and forward, and so must they.

Opening the message from Starfleet, Picard quickly read it and he began to wonder exactly what the twist would be that got Q involved. There was a scientific research team in the Damocles Nebula that had gone missing a week ago and since that was less than a day out from their current position, Starfleet requested that the _Enterprise _try and figure out what had happened. It was probably just a mechanical failure of some sort, but the region was mostly unexplored due to a general subspace disturbance around the nebula, so there was a chance something worse had happened.

With Q's dire warnings in mind, Picard had to fight for a moment to push down all sorts of imagined nightmare scenarios. He had a job to do; he would not let other factors cloud his judgement or the performance of his duties. He did wonder why the message had come over a private channel when he noticed that a small flotilla of Cardassian ships had flown into the nebula a few days _after_ contact was lost with the researchers. It was somewhat suspicious even if the timing was wrong, and clearly someone in Starfleet Command was worried that there were other things afoot in Damocles.

Closing down the message, Picard left to make the necessary preparations to head into the Damocles Nebula.

* * *

Rong-Arya sat on their command throne watching the swirling patterns of the nebula on the main view screen. This area of space was strangely agitated, the Warp beneath it frothing with whip tide currents of energy that leaked over into real space, although it had been nothing they couldn't handle. AT-field theory combined with Gellar field technology had produced remarkable refinements in protection against Warp storms, and it wasn't like there was anything actually living in the Warp that wasn't allied with them.

It was strangely comforting to them and many of the officers, the ones who had been to the Palace of the Gods as part of their academy training, a reminder of home. While the strategic consideration from the storms disrupting travel by any enemies had been the primary factor, the swirling cyan blues and bruise purples inflected with ribbons of baleful yellow had been an added bonus for making their base of operation this nebula.

As if listening in on their thoughts, the little bundle lying upon their lap squirmed and cooed happily. Stroking down the little one's head, Rong-Arya asked, "How goes the clean up?"

"We should have the finished feeding the bodies into the nutrient processors within the hour, but scrubbing down the blood and anything the Bearers left will take a little longer," Ichiro-Faust reported.

"Good, good. At least those fools will have served some purpose," Rong-Arya said while beginning to bounce the child up and down on their knee.

"Well, other than serving quite nicely for our mission," Ichiro-Faust noted.

"I would be quite happy to pick a fight with anyone that amoral any day. That it is our mission to slaughter these scum is merely a bonus in my opinion," Rong-Arya noted.

"I agree, I mean, we're supposed to be the forces of fucking evil out here, and even we were like, '_Get off your fucking asses and do something!_'" Striker noted with contempt while at his station.

Shaking their head, Rong-Arya finally, with some reluctance, handed off the six month old girl, the only survivor of what once been the United Federation of Planets Research Station 6-Alpha-47B, assigned to watch the region they called the Damocles Nebula in general and the development of a native species dubbed the Syracusans by the crew of the _Stiletto._

Emphasis on the word "watch".

The atmosphere of Syracuse II was being rapidly stripped away by excess solar activity triggered by the Warp storms that plagued this region of space, and would result in the extinction of the Syracusans within about fifty years. Considering that the Syracusans were currently just figuring out the basics of metal working, they didn't stand a chance.

When in surveying the region for the suitability of a base the _Stiletto _had discovered this world and the Federation research station stationed on the innermost moon, they had asked why nothing was being done for the natives.

The answer about the Prime Directive and it not being the Federation's place to interfere had _really _pissed off the crew of the _Stiletto_, especially Rong-Arya, who had lived through two lifetimes of people suffering due to the apathy of others. The gods could be cruel, capricious dicks with a passion for slaughter at times, but they stuck to their followers and instilled the same sense of loyalty throughout all layers of society.

You don't leave people in the lurch. You don't betray people. And if you're going to hurt someone it had damn well better be intentional.

To Rong-Arya, you didn't sit back and let genocide happen, you either left people alone or you started a massacre supporting one of the sides.

The research facility was cleansed before they even had time to get off a report about a first contact situation, the only survivor being the only being under the age of majority and thus innocent of the crimes of the adults.

Then the Cardassians had shown up. They had been more along the lines of people that Chaos could get to like, but unfortunately for them they had soured what could have been a great new relationship when they discovered the religious aspects of Chaos and the fact that the _Stiletto _intended to transfer as many of the Syracusans off their dying world as possible. Apparently the Cardassians found such sentiments as being weak and immediately tried to bully Rong-Arya into a new deal.

Of the seven ships sent there, only one escaped the sudden change in the relationship dynamic and only then because there were only six squads of marines to go around. The one escapee was quickly hunted down and gutted before being left to drift as a hulk in the nebula at one of the choke points these ships FTL drives had to navigate, a warning to others.

* * *

In navigating the Damocles Nebula, the _Enterprise _had come across a drifting Galor class cruiser of the Cardassian Union surrounded by a drifting debris field that had most likely come from the section of hull that was completely missing, apparently punched out by weapons fire. There was also a cooled cloud of residue that had probably once been the main reactor for the dead ship.

"Life signs are negative," the tactical officer reported. Picard did miss Worf, but his former tactical officer had been reassigned to Deep Space Nine shortly after the incident with the Nexus, along with a few others from his crew.

Beside him, Troi winced slightly as she held her head. Glancing at her, Picard asked, "What do you sense?"

Gritting her teeth, Troi replied, "There is nothing left alive here, but I sense an echo of pain and fear and… and laughter. There was a powerful, malignant presence here once Captain."

Looking at the image of the drifting hulk, Picard asked, "Are any sections of the hull still pressurized?"

His fingers dancing across the ops station, Data reported, "Sir, there is insufficient atmosphere to sustain life, but the majority of the ship does contain a rarefied atmosphere indicative of a slow leak rather than explosive decompression. The ship may still have been pressurized as little as three days ago."

Absorbing this information, along with the fact that the ship's warp core had detonated _outside _its hull and Troi's impressions it added up to one fact. "They were toying with them."

"Sir?" Data asked.

"Whoever did this was not intending to kill the Cardassians outright. Any weapon that could punch through their hull like that could have easily been pointed at engineering and destroyed the ship instantly. No, they crippled the ship and then…" Picard let the thought trail off. Whoever did this could have done all sorts of things. They could have left the Cardassians there to die, but there was the risk that they could have done found some way to slip away.

Making a decision, Picard ordered, "Riker, take Data and an away team over to the ship and see if you can find any survivors hidden from our scanners or salvage some information from the computer on what happened here."

"The Cardassians aren't going to like us snooping around there, sir," Riker pointed out as he got up to prepare for the mission.

"I know, but we can leave the diplomatic soothing of rumpled feathers for later, what is important right now is looking for survivors and answers," Picard replied.

"Excuse me captain, but I think I need to seek medical attention," Troi said while holding her forehead in pain.

"Of course, dismissed," Picard said. He frowned as his counsellor fled for sick bay. If just the residue of whoever had done this, what would an actual meeting do?


	8. First Contact

**Chapter Seven: First Contact**

With a glow of light and a hum that was lost to the rarefied air, Commander William Riker and Lieutenant Commander Data along with a small detail of security officers, beamed into the remains of the Cardassian ship. Wearing heavy environmental suits, they were protected from the lack of oxygen while the phaser rifles in their grasp would protect them in case their sensors were wrong and something sinister still lurked in these halls.

Almost immediately after materialization finished the magnetized boots on their feet locked them down on to the decks, artificial gravity having failed long ago. About the Federation crew bits and pieces of the ship floated, loose detritus left over from the battle set free.

The first signs of conflict aboard the ship happened when a severed hand, frozen solid as life support failed, floated into view. Running a tricorder over it, Data stated, "It is Cardassian sir."

Glancing at the hand, severed mid forearm, Riker asked, "What do you think caused that sort of damage."

Peering at it intently, Data then replied, "The wound appears to have been caused by a rapidly moving serrated edge, possibly consistent with a device used for the felling of trees in the 20th and early 21st centuries called a chainsaw."

Riker looked at Data funny before he asked, "You think a lumberjack could have done this?"

Making an approximation of a shrug, Data replied, "It was merely conjecture."

Continuing on towards where their records indicated the computer core should be on a Galor-class cruiser, the team then found out that the invaders had been to the computer core before them. And that the Cardassians had made a last stand there, dragging various pieces of equipment in front of the door to form a barricade to try and hold off the attackers. Judging by the dismembered, exploded, and partially incinerated bodies, it had not helped.

Droplets of blood floated in the void like red hail that was throwing a tantrum and refused to fall, although on one of the larger undamaged walls a strange symbol, an eight pointed star, had been painted there in the gore of the dead Cardassians. Data was the first to ask, "Why are you all looking away?"

"What?" Riker asked.

"In the past thirty seconds you have looked at the symbol painted on the wall seven times, but you have not maintained visual contact for longer than 0.72 seconds. The other members of the team have had similar behaviours," Data said by way of explanation.

Dumbfounded, Riker found his eyes slipping towards the symbol again, and while he found the mere thought of someone using another's viscera for the purposes of graffiti repulsive, he did find that there was an almost intangible pressure trying to drive his gaze away, a pain at the back of his eyeballs that told him that there was an awfulness to looking at the symbol beyond the surface ghastliness of its creation.

Looking away, Riker then found that despite the pain, there was now a sort of siren song begging him to look back at the symbol, but this he fought. He now knew that the pain he felt was his mind's way of telling him that there was something deeply wrong with the symbol.

Backing off, Riker ordered, "Data, scan that symbol, but be careful, it appears to be causing the rest of us pain just to look at it."

Cautiously approaching, Data ran the tricorder over it before he quickly took several steps back in surprise and reported, "There is some sort of subspace disturbance associated with the symbol, a very powerful one at that too, although very short range so we did not pick it up with the _Enterprise's _sensors."

One of the security men examining the remains of the barricade suddenly said, "Sir, I am getting some rather unusual readings from these remains. I have evidence of high energy neutron and gamma ray bombardment along with ion implantation of deuterium, tritium, and helium. Sir, if I am reading this right someone fired a directed fusion weapon at this barricade."

That raised some eyebrows. The smallest directed fusion weapons Starfleet knew of were mounted on star ships. A hand held version was ludicrous, not just in the technology it implied, but in the fact that anyone would ever feel the need to actually build something so overpowered as a hand weapon. There seemed absolutely no need in Riker's mind for a personal directed fusion weapon.

And yet someone had vaporized this barricade with one.

Entering into the room containing the remains of the computer core, the team immediately began searching through the floating debris for any data storage units that had not been smashed, reduced to slag, or otherwise damaged beyond the possibility of salvaging data from it. The hunt turned up very little, although Data did succeed in restoring internal monitoring.

At which point everyone with a functioning stomach had to turn away from the monitor.

"It would appear that whoever was not killed in the initial combat action was herded into the cargo bay, where it was flooded with waste from the recycling tanks and they were then left to die. Judging by the pattern of infections, many of them had open wounds before the cargo bay was flooded, possibly from earlier fighting," Data reported clinically.

"Switch it off Data, we've seen enough," Riker said while trying to hold down his gorge. They had never seen anything so wantonly brutal in the entire history of exploring space. The Borg were fairly horrible, but at least with them there was a sort of clinical coldness to their actions. This was… this was savagery simply for the sake of it, the product of a sick, diseased mind.

Data interpreted Riker's command as an order to switch to another point in the ship, this time the main cargo receiving area. This time one of the security men did throw up, his helmet flooding with his lunch before automated systems started drawing the liquid away from his face. Still, hacking up phlegm and mucus from his lungs, Riker immediately had him beamed away to the sick bay.

Of course, the transport would probably just cause further stress for the poor man.

The controls for the transporter lay scattered about, the safety interlocks all removed so it could be experimented with without the computer trying to automatically abort a transport into solid matter. The entire cargo bay was a tapestry of mutilated flesh, the product of the invaders beaming the crew into walls, other crew members, or just causing them to rematerialize wrong. Some of them even appeared to have survived for a time before being put through the procedure again.

"Commander, there are records here showing that two other cargo bays had recordings taken of them, although what exactly was recorded has been purged," Data reported.

"Shut the whole thing down Data, we don't need to see any more. I think we have what we need," Riker said as they assembled together what little material they had gathered. He then signalled the _Enterprise _to beam them back.

* * *

Picard was deeply troubled by what his away team had discovered; especially the symbol that sounded suspiciously very much like the one Q had been wearing on his uniform. Had that been some form of subtle warning about the nature of what they faced? Still, despite what they faced, they still had a mission to complete, and so they continued further in to the Damocles Nebula and Research Station 6-Alpha-47B.

Dropping out of warp in orbit above the second planet in the system, they discovered six more Cardassian warships already in orbit, but they could immediately tell that the ships no longer belonged to the Cardassians.

For one every one of the ships had been painted with an eight-pointed star, and each one held a different collection of unpleasant looking sigils in addition.

"Captain, their shields are down and their engines are running on low power. I would guess from life sign scans that they are currently running on skeleton crews," Data reported.

"Hail them," Picard ordered.

After a moment, Data replied, "No response sir."

Troi suddenly spoke up and said, "Captain! I sense-"

Whatever Troi had to say was cut off by her going into a sudden seizure, dropping from her seat as her whole body went into convulsions, froth and blood spewing from her mouth, her eyes solid white with pain. Another member of the bridge crew, a Vulcan, also dropped to the ground, and while not quite as bad, he did start screaming and desperately chanting out Vulcan meditation lines.

"This is the bridge, we have a medical emergency!" Picard said while tapping his communicator and getting a hold of the bridge.

"This is Sick Bay, we have reports from all over the ship flooding in," Dr. Crusher announced.

At that moment space seemed to unfold and vomit forth a ship, a lurid device of black and white, shaped like an arrow or blade of old and of a distorted, organic Gothic architecture. Statues of dull metal dotted the hull and depicted half molten figures wailing out in agony or various demons and monsters of a more superstitious age doing unspeakable things to each other. The entire thing seemed to be a dedication to all that was loathsome and unclean in the universe.

They had undoubtedly discovered the cause of all of this suffering.

"Hail them," Picard said angrily.

After a moment Data said, "No response sir, but we are picking up a frequency modulated radio signal originating from the ship."

"Radio?" Riker asked incredulously. It seemed laughably unlikely that a ship that big and with a drive system that they had never encountered before would use radio for communication.

Thinking for a second, Picard said, "Can you display it?"

"It appears to be audio only sir, but yes, we can communicate with them like this," Data replied.

"Very well, make it so," Picard ordered.

Data hit a few keys and then over the bridge's speakers a weirdly distorted voice said, "**Repeat, we use very different communications gear, this is the closest similarity in equipment we have. Please respond.**"

"Well that clears that up," Riker mused, trying to add a bit of levity to the situation. It fell rather flat considering what these people seemed likely to have done.

Frowning, Picard replied, "We hear you. Identify yourselves."

"**Ah… excellent. We will send you codec information for translating the video signals we use, but until you have those, allow us to introduce ourselves. We are Captain Arya-Rong, Unbound Daemonhost and client to Tzintchi the Nine Fingered and Chaos Undivided, respectively. We have command of the **_**Stiletto**_**, the ship you see before you,**" the voice on the other end said.

"I am Captain Jean Luc Picard of the _USS Enterprise _of the United Federation of Planets and I ask you what exactly you are doing about this world," Picard demanded.

"We have finished translating their video codec sir, we can have visual contact now," Data said.

"**I heard your underling, we are ready to transmit and receive whenever. As to your question, we are currently finishing the cleaning of the habitation modules and are beginning to ship over the natives from the planet below to take up habitation,**" Rong-Arya announced.

Picard's blood rain with fire and ice as he feared for the researchers who had been on the research station. He immediately demanded, "What of the people living on the station?"

At that moment the video kicked in, revealing Rong-Arya and the bridge crew of the _Stiletto_. Rong-Arya appeared to have once been a young Asiatic woman, but now a small set of vestigial horns kept her short black hair out of her eyes, which burned with intense yellow fire. Literally. Her uniform was made of some sort of leather bleached a stark white and cut to a curve hugging standard, set with several symbols, some of them what appeared to be rank insignia and service awards, while that same awful eight pointed star seemed to serve as the identifying symbol for her people.

Sitting about her were numerous crew set with extensive cybernetic implants that wired them in to their stations. The sheer sight of it made Picard recoil in horror at the memories of the Borg, although he quickly clamped down on the reaction.

"**Ah… excellent, video. To answer your question, we slaughtered everyone guilty of inaction in the face of genocide on that station, sending their unworthy souls to whatever gods they believe in for judgement of their crimes. Their homes shall go to those who they refused to help,**" Rong-Arya announced.

Picard blinked. He then practically shouted, "You _killed _them all! There were over a hundred scientists and support staff on that station!"

Rong-Arya shrugged, "**There are over twenty million sentient beings on the planet below whose only chance of survival as their planet's ecosystem is destroyed is advanced space flight technology, which do not have the time to develop."**

It suddenly dawned upon Picard what had happened. "You broke the Prime Directive!"

Rong-Arya snarled, revealing ferocious teeth before she spat out, "**On my homeworld hundreds of millions of people died because no one cared to interfere after a disaster, and if not for the actions of the gods I probably would have eventually suffered the same fate as my best friend, which was to be gang raped at age **_**eight! **_**Entropy is a fundamental aspect of the universe, but it can be staved off with action. If all you do is sit around and say 'It is someone else's problem' then things will only get worse. I will personally rip the throat out of the next person who spouts off to me about the Prime Directive and drink of their blood until their body stops twitching.**"

Picard was shocked and appalled that this Rong-Arya could have compassion for others while also being so utterly amoral and vicious. Picard decided to try and different tack, "We have the Prime Directive for a reason. In the past when cultures of wildly differing levels of advancement have clashed, the lesser has inevitably suffered greatly for it."

"**So the loss of culture and the suffering of individuals during the transition are preferable to extinction?**" Rong-Arya asked.

Picard said nothing.

"**Now hear this Federation scum, and hear it well. We are Chaos. We are anger, despair, lust, and scheming given form and motion. We are righteousness, love, passion and hope given action. We are all things. We chose to help these people because we want to, because we can. We choose to slaughter our enemies like vermin because we want to, because we can. Now, you have a choice too. You can return to your Federation and return with supplies to help build these people a new home, or we can take it from you. You have 48 hours to leave, discuss things with your superiors, and return the answer to with our demands or we resort to force,**" Rong-Arya said.

"Now-" Picard was cut off by the _Stiletto _firing a shot across their bow with their main gun. The majority of the beam actually missed them, but there was enough bleed off that the whole _Enterprise _was knocked about.

The tactical officer shouted out, "Shields are down to 40!"

"**Go Picard, tell your Federation of the glories of Chaos and the horrors of defying us. Oh, and my aides tell me that you fear our appearance, something to do with the Borg. Please take these as tokens of our appreciation then,**" Rong-Arya said with a sneer before waving a clawed hand dismissively to someone off screen.

Immediately the air began to pop and bang with the appearance of heads being teleported onto the bridge through the weakened shields. They thumped and rolled as they hit the decks, and one wandered down to Picard's feet, the single still organic eye set in the pale skin looking up almost pleadingly into Picard's eyes.

The _Enterprise _retreated back into the nebula at full warp.


	9. Turnabout

**Chapter Eight: Turnabout**

The first ever lasgun to roll off the Area-51 production lines sat on the conference table at the SGC like the proverbial forbidden fruit after a bite had been taken, the lump of metal and plastic all but staring at them accusingly over what they had done. The construction had been frighteningly fast, much of the tooling required already being in existence in one form or another somewhere else.

As far as SG-1 was concerned, it was too perfect. Daniel in particular was displeased with what sat before them.

"I'm not saying it's not useful, it's just that I do not trust the source. Oh, I'm sure that the first couple of trades and gifts will be in our favour, but as time goes on the price will get steeper and steeper. They've pretty much admitted to being untrustworthy," Daniel argued.

"I know what you mean, but I think that they're trying to intentionally put us between the proverbial rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they appear to be violent, scheming psychopaths who we would want to think twice about jumping into bed with… while on the other hand they appear to be violent, scheming psychopaths who we would want to think twice about making enemies with, especially with the Ori and guys like Baal running about," Mitchell pointed out.

"It is indeed a conundrum. There have been other rumours stirring amongst the Free Jaffa of late, of strangers offering incredible things and promises of aid against the Ori. There is even talk that there is a woman offering freedom from reliance upon symbiotes and tretonin," Teal'c reported.

Scowling somewhat, General Landry said, "As much as I agree with your judgements, I'm afraid that the congressional oversight committee has decided that trade with Prometheus is too good to pass up, and they request that you go meet with him."

Daniel's frown deepened and he said, "I was afraid that you would say that. I would also like to point out that I think our new 'friend' Prometheus knew that you would say that too."

"Now I know that he sent us a message two days ago saying that he wanted to meet us elsewhere because his friend Lady Justice was attracting too much Prior heat to make meetings safe, but will we just be meeting him off world, or are we to escort him somewhere else for negotiations?" Mitchell asked.

One corner of his face twitching upward, Landry said, "You can at least be relieved that the oversight committee did take to heart the fact that you did not fully trust him and thus any meeting would take place at the Beta Site."

"Where he will be polite and shower us in gifts of technology, slowly gaining our trust until such point as he gets an invite to Earth. I can feel it, he wants to get here and take something from us, I just don't know what," Daniel muttered darkly.

"As much as I appreciate your insights Dr. Jackson, I'm afraid that my hands are tied on this one, and unless you want to start an interplanetary incident with some very powerful people by taking drastic measures of your own, there's nothing you can do about it," Landry replied equally darkly.

"I doubt simply shooting him would actually do anything," Daniel noted before he tilted his head towards the lasgun and asked, "So are we going to be bringing that off world with us?"

Shaking his head, Landry replied, "No, we are still doing full field testing, but there is currently a great deal of pressure to start moving the weapon into service by the end of the year for our special forces teams the advantages it offers over conventional weapons are so great."

"How exactly are we going to spin this one by the way?" Daniel asked.

"We've already been introducing some of the new derivative power technologies to the public at large, not naquadah generators of course but some better batteries and the like from the technologies we have already. With the theory we have for the new laser technology we can select one of our front companies to announce the discovery and then within a year we should be able to have the public convinced that this sort of weapon is feasible," Carter explained.

Sighing and shaking his head sadly, Daniel said, "It's all so reasonable, isn't it?"

* * *

"Please! Be reasonable!" Netan cried out in horror and anguish, all of his pride and arrogance gone, reduced as he was to this pitiful, begging state. It had been a long hard fall from where he had once been, and far, far too quick for his liking, as there had not even been the fun of years of decadent living to make him soft to blame for this situation.

No, in less than a month this damnable woman had swept to power in the Lucian Alliance and now here she was sitting upon his throne, leering down at him.

Lady Compassion, as she called herself, wore clothing more suited to some slave dancer girl than a mercenary warlord, her entire attire consisting of little more than a strip of black leather that barely contained her ample breasts and a long, dark purple loincloth coloured similarly to her hair that had a tendency to fall in such a way as to just barely remain decent. It had the effect of distracting others from what she was truly doing as the men were too busy drooling and the women too busy trying to cause her to spontaneously combust.

Holding a delicate, wide brimmed glass in her hand by the stem and swirling about the amber liquid within, Lady Compassion smiled and said, "Netan, I hold in my hands and entire plant's worth of the active psychoactive chemicals in kassa dissolved in pure grain alcohol. This is enough to kill a three hundred pound Jaffa warrior in his prime a dozen times over. Including the glass, this drink is probably worth enough to put a down payment on a Death Glider if you found the right market."

She then downed the entire drink in a single gulp and crushed the delicate glass in her hand, causing shards to lacerate her long, delicate fingers and palms. Alcohol and kassa extract mingled with her unnaturally dark red blood and pattered against the floor. The smell was rich and metallic and heady and all in attendance found saliva rushing to their mouths as the little drops hit the floor.

Grinning too broadly, Lady Compassion said, "Netan, I am not a reasonable woman, so why do you throw your pleas upon something that does not exist?"

Rising so smoothly and seductively from the throne that it was almost obscene, Lady Compassion picked up a long, thin, slightly curved sword from where it lay and sashayed down to him, licking her lips in anticipation, her eyes going wide like a drug addicts after just getting a fix.

"Netan, I am Lady Compassion, it is who I am to feel the pain of others and attempt to help them. Your kassa idea was wonderful, but you had so little insight as to how to use it. It is not to be given to the highest bidder when so many crave it; it is to be given to all so as to make their lives better. Not so much that it destroys them, but just enough that they will follow whoever controls the kassa. Netan, you caused much suffering and planned to cause much more. Netan, I have caused you much suffering, and plan to cause much more," Lady Compassion said as she slowly circled him, drawing the tip of the razor sharp blade across his flesh with feather light precision, only just cutting the very surface of the skin.

With a deft flick Lady Compassion drew a deep line across Netan's back, cutting deep into the muscles along his left shoulder, cutting right down to the scapula in places. Crying out in pain as he lost much of the control of his left arm, Netan suddenly found himself unable to do anything else as she was suddenly next to him, suffocating all thoughts with her scent. More than just the smell of drugs or perfume, it was an inherent bouquet that seemed to bypass the nostrils and act directly upon the brain.

She bit into his ear, the act intensely painful as his flesh parted beneath her inhumanly sharp teeth and yet somehow intensely sensual such that the sound Netan let out was trapped somewhere between describing intense pleasure and searing agony. She then whispered, "I can feel your pain Netan. The problem for you is that I _like _pain."

Those in attendance watched Lady Compassion take apart Netan over the course of the next seven hours, and none could say that there wasn't at least a glimmer of jealousy in their hearts that their former leader should be blessed with Lady Compassion's tender mercies so.

Passing her blood soaked blade off to a servant girl, Lady Compassion said in a bored tone, "Clean that please."

Practically _oozing _onto her throne, Lady Compassion then drew her right thumbnail across her left wrist, letting her own dark blood mingle with the already browning gore from Netan. She then reversed the ordering of the implements and then held out her hands for her followers. She said to them in an urging tone, "Come, drink of my blood, and eat of my flesh, so that I might open the gates of paradise for you."

As the mercenaries and warlords all kneeled before her in reverence rather than the fear most had known from the Goa'uld, Lady Compassion wondered how much she would be able to piss off the Tau'ri that still had religious faith when they found out about this.

* * *

In another layer of reality in another universe Asukhon looked at the board they had set up and watched as Mislaato finished consolidating her hold on the Lucian Alliance and scored bonus points for being the first one to acquire ships, while Tzintchi continued to push his tendrils outward into various subversive cultures that would welcome him without truly understanding what he was until it was too late.

They could all see where the game was going. Her early lead was about to evaporate as the others built up a larger industrial and tech base while she still languished on a few backwards worlds and her largest stronghold teetered precariously on the brink of destruction.

Tzintchi glanced at the game while absentmindedly spinning together strands of alien genetic code for one of his projects. Noticing the movement of the pieces, he said, "I do hope you have a plan dear because I do believe that is a squadron of Ha'taks lead by a Prior appearing over your world."

* * *

Lady Justice sat atop a throne of hundreds of skulls, the result of the many battles in the past few weeks between those who had dedicated themselves to the Eightfold Victor and those who followed the Path of Origin. Some of the skulls were from the Asukhon's worshippers, but the large majority were from those that worshipped the Ori.

The village had long ago been evacuated by all but the stoutest of warriors, and even then the greatest ones amongst them were elsewhere, tasked with rebuilding the pack when this group met their end. Those that remained were arranged in a very specific manner, whipping themselves, drawing blood to please their goddess, staining the soil red with their fervour. Already a few members of the congregation of violence had collapsed; their bodies unable to take the strain the self-flagellation and religious ecstasy put upon them.

Lady Justice looked up at the sky just in time to see the first dots of light falling towards their position. She smiled a shark toothed smile.

* * *

In orbit the Prior watched with grim satisfaction as the blasphemers disappeared beneath a searing ball of white light. While the use of the unhallowed technology of this galaxy was repugnant, attacking through the Stargate had been simply impossible with that demon guarding the other side. In the balance, using Ha'taks as instruments of divine punishment was far less offensive to the Ori than allowing the demon and her flock of evil to survive. Of course, such creations of wickedness would have to be abandoned now that the job was done, but still…

Down below on the planet the fireballs from the orbital bombardment started to dim, far sooner than they should have. The mushroom clouds began to change and distort, their colour shifting to an awful blood red, spreading out across the planet like some sort of sickness.

An image of something horrible happening began to form in the Prior's mind as he tried to read the strands of the future.

"Destroy that cloud!" He cried out in fury to the followers who had provided the ships. They complied obediently and sent more shots raining down upon the primitive, undefended world below. For a time the burning air drowned out the darkness, but these new shots too were consumed, and the cloud began to split and form geometric patterns.

Stalking angrily up to the controls of the flagship, the Prior shoved the Jaffa out of the way of the Pel'tak and began personally commanding the bombardment. The unhallowed technology of this heathen galaxy was just feeding energy into what was taking place. Something sacred and pure would be necessary.

Power flowed through the Prior and into the ship, transforming the yellow-orange blast from the cannons into elongated arrows of brilliant white flame that lanced down into the planet, burning away the unholy taint spreading across the surface. Wherever the Prior turned the guns the touch of the Ori drove away the demon's blasphemous presence. But already much of the mark it was making had been completed. More power was needed. More power. More…

The Prior had not even noticed the point where he had burst into flames without burning, such was the strength of the connection with his patron Ori that the ascended being had actually manifested through him to provide enough power to purify the planet. They did however notice when a very annoyed and insistent cough cut through their focus.

Standing in a ring about the Prior were a dozen Ancients glowing with soft white light in contrast to his bright orange fires and looking very, _very _pissed.

It was at that moment that the Ori who had manifested just realized that it was alone and outnumbered by several orders of magnitude in a hostile galaxy.

"You know, we let your agents operate unhindered as you were not _technically _breaking our laws, right up until this moment," the lead Ancient said before the group surged forward and mobbed the interloper, dragging him screaming off to the higher planes for his punishment for violating their laws of non-interference.

Aboard the ships all that had seen what they just had suddenly found their decision to throw their lot in with the Ori looking considerably less well thought out than they had originally considered, while the rest of the ships continued their last order and tried to destroy the sign.

Down below on the planet the spell Lady Justice had crafted using the sacrifice of her followers reached completion. While not normally one for such trickery, Asukhon was nowhere near as inflexible on the idea of magic as her predecessor Khorne had been. Thus as a final 'Fuck you' to the Ori, Lady Justice had created a planet wide graffiti mark, a grand illusion of bloody clouds to taunt her foes.

Of course, the fact that the mark she chose was one that if it received a large influx of energy from say an Ascended-boosted orbital bombardment it would do something more than just create a short lived illusion was not entirely coincidental. The Ori had, in their panic, burned a grand symbol into the planet in continent sized strokes and provided all of the energy needed.

Reality broke down, unzipping about the world. Lightning cracked across the sky and the seas turned to blood as the Warp began to boil forth in skies above, swallowing the planet whole.

* * *

Tzintchi swore in seven thousand languages simultaneously as he watched Asukhon's plan unfold before he glared at her odiously.

Blinking her lashes at him in false lady-like modesty, Asukhon said, "Now my dear, they did it to the poor Tau'ri with their first supergate, there is no reason turnabout can't be fair play. Besides, you should feel flattered I stole something so clever from your play book."

As he picked up one of the Ori figures and tossed it onto her scoring table and then conjured forth a Daemonworld, a freaking _Daemonworld_, he asked, "How many points is _that_?"

"Considering I made sure it would still be connected to the Stargate network, more than you'll likely ever get," Asukhon said sweetly.

Tzintchi swore again.


	10. Temptation

**Chapter Nine: Temptation**

Kyon had a headache. Trying to juggle schoolwork and keeping Haruhi entertained was really starting to wear him thin, especially now that Yuki kept giving him updates on some of the things that had been flitting in and out of their universe because Haruhi had decided that she wanted to meet creatures from other universes.

Yuki had given him _The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft _shortly after their meeting with the creature and he had wondered _why _she would want to meet _anything _from another universe when there was the possibility that it could very well be anything like what had come out of that man's mind. Especially since from what Yuki had been saying to a large degree the guys using their universe as a transfer station were _worse._

Kyon made damn sure though that he kept that book well away from Haruhi. It did no good to give her any new sorts of crazy ideas, especially ones that could potentially end with gibbering madness and people being eaten. The cave cricket had been bad enough.

His mind was so weary that it took him a moment to realize that he was doodling on his paper. Glancing down, he found that he was trying to work out how exactly to construct the name that the creature had given him. He immediately scribbled it out, not trying to dare the universe to make things worse for him. Still, the damn sounds that thing had made picked at his brain, like an open wound on the inside on your mouth that would go away if you just stopped tonguing it, but trying to ignore it only brought more attention to how much it bothered you.

Tzintchi. What an odd name, although he supposed if you squinted at it you might be able to call it a mangled version of Shinji or something like that. Definitely a difficult word to get right. What characters would be needed to properly construct those sounds? It would…

Kyon paused as he looked down at what he had written, before angrily scratching it out. He had been warned that the names and symbols could get into your head. These things were corruptors, insidious and powerful and…

Kyon felt a peculiar and unfortunately familiar gaze boring into the back of his head. Turning about, Kyon found Haruhi looking at him funny, the sort of annoyed inquisitive stare that said, "What on Earth are you doing Kyon and why haven't you included me yet?" while simultaneously insulting his intelligence.

"Kyon, what are you doing?" Haruhi asked him in an annoyed tone.

"Doodling," Kyon replied honestly while trying not to sound nervous because that would indicate that he had something to hide so therefore something Haruhi would want to see because it was her business to butt into every aspect of Kyon's life whenever possible just because she could get away with it.

"Let me see," Haruhi demanded.

"I…" Kyon did not have time to try and deflect her attention before she reached past him and snatched away the piece of paper he had been doodling upon.

Glancing over it, Haruhi then shrugged and said, "You're not very good at this are you?"

Angrily snatching the paper back from her, Kyon shook his head said, "I wasn't _trying _to make it good, which is why I kept scribbling stuff out."

Sniffing disdainfully, Haruhi said, "And that word was just weird. Tzintchi? I've never heard of that before."

Kyon's blood ran cold. If he said that name three times it was supposed to summon forth some form of representative to talk to. If _Haruhi _said it… the possibilities for destruction were endless.

Glancing side to side and noticing that the walls of reality still _looked _solid, Kyon said, "That's not how you're supposed to pronounce it."

Shaking her head, Haruhi said, "No, it looked like you were very deliberately going for Tzintchi."

That was two. Come on, think Kyon! Deflect her attention.

Shrugging, Kyon replied, "I was just combining random stuff. Say, did you hear about…"

"Come on; tell me why you were trying to write 'Tzinchti'? What does it mean?" Haruhi asked.

Three. She had said it three times. Kyon winced and braced for the tentacles to start, but when after a second of nothing happening he finally said, "Alright, it's the name of an evil character in a book I read, but it's originally from another language so I was trying to figure out how to spell it. It's no big deal."

Haruhi didn't seem convinced, but she was satisfied with that and left the matter alone. Seeing as how the universe failed to implode, Kyon was just as happy otherwise.

He had almost forgotten the entire incident until he got home later that day and his sister said, "Kyon, you have mail!"

What his sister handed him was a post card of the biggest, richest hotel in the area with an invitation in lurid, flowing writing on the back for Kyon to come meet his 'Internet friend' Tzintchi for lunch on the weekend, which was conveniently the next day.

Oh. Crap.

* * *

Kyon arrived at the hotel lobby and immediately felt rather shabby, what with the rich décor and expertly dressed staff. Surprisingly though, as soon as he walked through the door holding the post card and looking annoyed and confused one of the staff in a crisply starched uniform approached him and asked, "Are you Kyon-sama?"

Kyon blinked a few times before he said, "Uh… yes, my name is Kyon."

"Your friend Shinji-sama said to expect you. He is waiting for you in the restaurant, and he also anticipated that you might not be able to meet our exacting dress code standards, so he had an outfit prepared for you. If you would come this way," the man said, leading a bemused and befuddle Kyon to a private washroom where a richly cut and tailored suit of western fashion was waiting for him with an attendant there to help him. While Kyon waived off the attendant, he did discover that the suit fit him perfectly and showed all of the signs of having been hand tailored specifically for him in the past day.

Once appropriately attired, Kyon was lead to the restaurant section of the hotel where he did a double take when he thought he saw Yuki sitting there only to realize that it was in fact another pale, blue haired girl with a closed off, bookish expression, although she looked considerably more expressive than Yuki when Kyon had first met her. She was wearing a modest blue dress.

The other guests at the table included a thirty-something woman in a dark-purple, almost black, strapless dress that matched her hair with a simple silver cross hanging down and almost plunging into her ample cleavage; a girl with long, vibrant red hair and an expression of supreme smugness in a shimmering scarlet dress; and lastly a quiet, reserved looking young man wearing a suit of identical cut to the one given to Kyon, only coloured dark blue with a slight indigo trim in places to the conservative black and white given to Kyon.

Despite the finery and richness and the elegant, public setting, Kyon could not help but feel his skin crawl in reaction to being around these people, if that was even the appropriate word for them. The hotel staff all seemed oblivious, but Kyon could feel the aura of menace radiating off of them.

He was now in the presence of predators.

"Hello Kyon-san, how are you today?" The young man asked.

"Tzintchi I presume?" Kyon asked while he sat down, a chair pushed forward for him.

"If you wish you can call me Shinji, or possibly Ikari-san if you really feel like being formal, seeing as how I am using this old form. Or technical as how I am borrowing this old form, as are my lovely associates," Shinji said.

Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, Kyon said, "And your friends?"

"Katsuragi Misato," the older woman said in a way that simultaneously gave Kyon a serious case of the willies while also made him feel warm all over.

"Ayanami Rei," the pale, blue haired girl said in a quiet, flat tone.

"Asuka Langley Soryu," the red head told him with an arrogant grin.

"We are… how to put it so that you will understand properly? We are… avatars I suppose you could call us, projections of the gods into this reality. We are simultaneously more and less than the servant sent to deliver our message to you. You can thank your friend Haruhi for our ability to be here by the way," Shinji explained.

"I… see… Ikari-san," Kyon replied, intentionally trying to distance himself as much as possible from these people.

Shinji grinned slightly while folding his hands together in front of his chest, the smile somehow not reaching his eyes. He then said, "You think us evil and wanting to do harm to you and the ones you care about."

His expression hardening, Kyon replied, "I know that you sent a warship through here to some other universe just so that you could bully the inhabitants."

"Bully is an inappropriate term. 'Massacre the pathetic fools' is far more appropriate," Asuka interjected.

"Now, now dear, we're here to reassure our friend here, not scare him," Shinji said.

"It is the truth," Rei pointed out calmly.

Shrugging, Shinji replied, "Yes, but it is not the whole truth. Yes, we deployed our ship with the intent of picking a fight, but not to _start _a fight." Shinji then turned back to Kyon and said, "Do you know what the population of my home world is, not counting immortal creatures such as daemons?"

Kyon stared at Shinji before he said, "No."

"Two billion. In the past eighteen years with some encouragement in the form of _very _generous social programs we have managed to more than _double _that number from a low point of about 950 million a few years after a group of psychotic old men tried to kill _everyone_ and only by hijacking the process for the purposes of our own apotheosis did we prevent the extinction of the human race," Shinji explained slowly.

"Fifteen years before _that _the same group of old men wiped out _half _the world's population to set up for the final killing stroke," Misato said with cold anger.

"Where we come from, none but the very young have not known hardship and horrors in their lives. It is exceedingly rare for anyone over the age of twenty to have a complete family, and uncommon for even teenagers. We are vicious and predatory, make no mistake, but we are _human_. We will obliterate with extreme prejudice anything and anyone who stands between us and our friends and families. Mother bears have nothing on us," Asuka stated.

"And we understand that the same goes for _you_," Shinji said. "This is why we leave you alone."

"Haruhi might wield absolute, omnipotent power, but you are the real deity in the equation seeing as you are unaffected by her power. You are the one constant in the universe that which was carved into the slate of the blackboard that Haruhi writes upon. But one word from you to Haruhi and the whole universe would be rewritten. And yet you care about your friends and family too much to let them be erased like that, so you fight to preserve what is. We applaud your nobility," Misato said, and then the four of them all gave light applause to Kyon.

"We applaud your nobility because we have none ourselves. We might have our own twisted morals and rules of conduct, but ultimately we are greedy, vicious monsters. We are all that is wrong with humanity given form… and yet enough intelligence to realize that ultimate indulgence in our own baser desires would be counter-productive in the long run. We straddle the fine line between benevolent dictators and competent evil overlords. But we respect you Kyon, we respect what you sacrifice to put up with Haruhi," Shinji explained.

"But since we are corruptors, we must ask you; how much longer can you keep this up, how much more can you take, what are the limits of your nobility?" Rei asked.

"Even before we arrived here, we have always been with you. We are emotion. How often have you grown furious with Haruhi? How often have you wanted to just give up and let her destroy everything? How often have you wanted to selfishly harness her powers for your own will? And how often have you wondered if Haruhi's demands might take a more… twisted turn?" Misato said.

"Would you like to hear a tale Kyon-san?" Shinji asked.

"What is it about?" Kyon asked nervously as he tried to keep some mental distance from these creatures. Even when they told him awful things, things that should repulse him, he could hear the terrible logic in their words.

"It's about a race of creatures we call the Eldar. Their civilization lasted for millions of years, bringing them to the pinnacle of art and technology. Their people lived nearly immortal lives with not a care in the world, protected from the outside universe by their vast powers. Do you know what happened to them?" Shinji asked.

Kyon kept quiet.

"They grew _bored_. For generations they had no great trials of war or disease or famine to test them. So they turned inward and they created great works of art and civilization. And for a time this satisfied them. But when you live for thousands of years and your history stretches back for millions, with your civilization extending across tens of thousands of worlds, then you will have possibly hundreds of Da Vincis, Leonardos, and Picassos all living at the same time, with hundreds of thousands more in the past. Soon everything will have been done and there will be no way to compete. So they grew bored _again._ They needed new entertainments, new excitements, and new arts to pass the time. Soon for the immortal Eldar the only thing that could soothe the dullness of eternal life was death. They began to experiment in pain and death, creating horrid works of art of unimaginable cruelty. For thousands of years the filled the void of their lives with the worst excesses of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, until finally all that negative emotion came around to bite them in the ass. They literally birthed a god of hentai, a god that they proceeded to destroy the creatures that gave it existence," Misato finished off.

"How much longer do you think you can keep Haruhi from growing _bored_?" Shinji asked maliciously. "More so, how much longer before she starts to think of men as something more than women with penises and flat chests? What happens when she starts to want things that you don't want to give her? You have already seen how badly she treats Asahina-san, and how willing all the other members of the SOS Brigade are to acquiesce to her demands. How much longer before her harassment turns from thoughtlessness to play?"

Kyon wanted to say that was impossible, that they had been doing great so far, but could he say the same thing a year from now? Two years? Ten? Would they have to spend their whole lives keeping Haruhi from growing bored with existence? Could they keep providing her with new, interesting distractions that were healthy?

"We are the temptations of life: avarice, wrath, apathy, and lust. To fight us is to be human. To embrace us is to be human. We are also the virtues of life: hope, valour, joy, and passion. To desire us is to be human. To fail to live up to us is to be human. We are the dreams and nightmares of an entire species made flesh. We know what you live through, we know more than what you have lived through or ever will live through," Shinji said.

"And we can teach you to fuck three girls up the ass at the same time and blow their minds," Misato said crudely.

That snapped Kyon out of it, causing him to angrily slam his hands down on the table while rising. Without another word he turned and left. He had very nearly fallen for their words, had very nearly wanted to know more, wanted to see if they could offer him any way out of the pains, and joys, that living with Haruhi offered. They were monsters trying to seduce him, and he had listened to enough of their poison.

Before he got out of earshot, Shinji said, "We will be here. Even if you throw us out of your universe, lock the door and throw away the key, you will never be rid of what we represent."


	11. Raid

**Chapter Ten: Raid**

Rong-Arya glanced down at the antique pocket watch in their hand, snapping it shut just as the second hand reached the designated point. "Forty-eight hours, times up. Lieutenant Burke, please put in the course to the nearest Federation world."

While the rest of the crew made final preparations to jump to the Warp, Rong-Arya had a yeoman bring the child, renamed Glory from whatever her unworthy biological parents had called her, to the captain. Under normal circumstances Rong-Arya would berate anyone else for bringing a child aboard a warship, but in this fragile universe the _Stiletto _was the safest place there was.

Holding the tiny child up, their clawed hands not so much as leaving a scratch upon the smooth, unblemished flesh, they let the child see their face. At first the fires that burned within them had scared the child, but as she came to know them the fear had turned to joy. Joy that was reciprocated. Arya's wife and children had died in the wars following Second Impact, and Rong had only the vaguest memories of her own family, consumed by the holocaust of Third Impact so very long ago. To raise a child was a blessing.

Tendrils of thought caressed the child's mind, feeling the tiny mind just beginning the first steps of growth that would transform it from something barely above that of an animal into a sapient mind bursting with thoughts and emotions and possibilities. A thought crossed Rong's mind and Arya quickly agreed with it. Glory and the Syracusans were the same. The Syracusans had the potential of all sapient species, but they were young and vulnerable, babes in comparison to civilizations such as the Federation and the Cardassians. But instead of caring for and nurturing the young, those two groups saw nothing of worth.

Indeed, what use is a newborn child?

Far too soon though the ship exited the Warp and Lieutenant Burke announced, "We have arrived captain."

"Any opposing warships?" They asked.

"None ma'am. No ground installations detected either. The system is for all intents and purposes undefended," Lieutenant Xavier announced.

"Pathetic. Take us into orbit about the world and begin launching transports for the surface. Lieutenant O'Hare, please begin transmission with that subspace communicator we recovered," Rong-Arya ordered.

"We are online… I think… stupid piece of junk," Lieutenant O'Hare muttered while fiddling with the controls to the stolen short range communication system. "And… by the gods is this set-up retarded. Alright, we appear to have contact with the colony on the planet."

A static filled image appeared on the screen of a middle aged man of central Asian descent, this once dark hair turned to salt and pepper while his skin was weathered and cragged from long hours of hard work in the outdoors. Just for that he immediately had more respect from Rong-Arya than the pampered dandies they had slain on the research station.

"I am Administrator Nurlan Fomenko, identify yourselves and your reason for being here," the man said with not a trace of fear or anger, just the tone of a man who was trying to protect his people. More points to him.

"**We are Captain Arya-Rong, Unbound Daemonhost and client to Tzintchi the Nine Fingered and Chaos Undivided, respectively. We have command of the **_**Stiletto**_**, the ship you see before you**," Rong-Arya said, giving the standard formal greeting.

"That answers who you are, but not what you are doing above our world," Nurlan pointed out.

Chuckling, Rong-Arya dropped the pretentious echo and said, "I can see you are a man of the mould of the old Federation we have read about. I like you already."

"And I don't like people who appear over the world I am in charge of with ships I can't get good readings on who don't answer my questions," Nurlan said in an annoyed tone.

Bursting out into full blown laughter, Rong-Arya said, "I _really _like you. Alright, we're here for your standard raiding and looting. You have things we need that we can't particularly pay for, and we want to send a message to your government."

"You're surprisingly amicable about this," Nurlan said.

"You're surprisingly calm," Rong-Arya pointed out.

"Panic gets people under my watch killed," Nurlan replied.

Nodding, Rong-Arya said, "Alright then, unless this is an attempt to lure us into a false sense of security and then ambush us, you get to live. Actually, we'll just crucify you if you try anything and leave enough of your people alive to take you down, I like you that much."

Blinking a few times at this declaration, Nurlan asked wearily, "What do I need to do to keep my people alive?"

"We want all the mining equipment you have, food, some of those fancy replicators, and some fusion reactors. We don't trust any of that antimatter shit you guys seem fond of on your star ships," Rong-Arya listed.

Hanging his head, Nurlan said, "So everything that makes a colony run."

"More or less, we probably won't take everything; we only have so much room in our cargo bays after all," Rong-Arya said cheerfully.

"I'll tell the people. Most of them won't like it, but its not like we have the force to put up even a token resistance," Nurlan said sadly.

* * *

Warlock Hakim could still feel the sway and buckle of the drop ship in his body, but that too was slowly fading with each successive mission. With each passing day his body continued to atrophy while his mind expanded to take its place. Such was the fate of a Herald of Tzintchi. Every last member of the chapter was psychic to some degree, with rank being determined by power and ability as much as tactical insight. But unlike the old Thousand Sons legion, with the Heralds the powerful psykers were the ones that turned to dust. As their powers increased their bodies could not grow to accommodate them, so they had to rely on their armour to bind their spirits to the mortal plane. With Hakim only a Warlock, about equivalent of a sergeant in another chapter, he was about half flesh and half fine sand, although which half was which tended to not stay fixed from moment to moment.

His battle brothers burned brightly in his witch sight around him, their sorcerous energies contained to varying degrees by the wards upon their armour. It still amused Hakim to this day that the design of their armour, of their entire Chapter, was taken directly from a group in the Old Way built from the ground up to fight Chaos. If it hadn't been for the naming conventions of the other chapters, the Heralds of Tzintchi had very nearly been called the Chaos Knights.

With a thump the shuttle touched down. The _Stiletto _did not have the capacity to launch ships in the midst of combat, but it did have assault shuttles for the Marines and larger transports for ferrying goods and materials about, and all of them had been deployed for this mission. With the barest of nods, Hakim ordered his men out of the ship, force weapons at the ready, safeties off their storm bolters.

Leaving the shuttle in crisp military perfection, each brother covering two others, Hakim took point and began to lead them away as the shuttle took off from the drop zone to cover them from the air. Reaching out with his senses, Hakim announced, "Shoulder halberds, parade formation. Remain alert though."

Snapping into rigid formation, the Marines began to follow behind Hakim as he advanced towards the settlement.

"Oh and when the time comes, let me handle it," Hakim ordered.

* * *

Administrator Nurlan stood a proud but defeated man in the main town square of the primary settlement, the majority of the town's population turned out in the streets about him, fearfully watching as winged craft from the ship above circled like waiting sharks. Then the cries began to lift up as the invaders came into sight.

Their species was unknown, clad as they were in armour, but presumably similar to the horned creature he had in the communications with the ship sitting far above, ready to rain annihilation down upon them if they resisted. These creatures were giants, each one standing between two and a half and three metres tall, covered head to foot in enormous blue armour set with gold trim and awful symbols and sigils that seemed to crawl and squirm across their frames when the eye caught them in the periphery. Bizarrely enough, they were all carrying ornately decorated _halberds_, as if melee weapons had a purpose in an age of directed energy weapons and star ships. Still, Nurlan would not want to face one of those things.

Coming to a stop in front of Nurlan, the lead soldier announced in a tinny, booming voice, "Greetings, I am Warlock Hakim of the Heralds of Tzintchi, and I am here to ensure that you comply with our demands."

"It is not like we have a choice," Nurlan replied wearily. Damn the Federation for leaving them so unprotected out here on the frontier.

"You could fight us," Hakim pointed out.

Almost as punctuation someone fired a phaser at the hulking, armoured giant, striking him dead in the centre of the chest. The off-yellow beam flared brightly for a second before ceasing, showing that it had failed to scorch the paint.

"Excuse me for one moment," Hakim noted before raising his right arm, displaying that there were a pair of excessively large gun barrels attached to the top of the gauntlet. With a monstrous roar Hakim opened fire, sending a pair of rounds into the building where the phaser shot had come from. With a dual crack, whatever the warlock had fired exploded, causing the windowsill to give way and dump the young man who had fired defiantly at them.

Walking up to the sprawled out figure, Hakim hauled the man, boy really, to his feet. Nurlan drew in his breath as he realized who had done in. It was Michael McGregor, a hot head who was always blabbing on about how the Federation should take a stronger stance with the Cardassians despite the fact that the boy was only seventeen and really knew nothing about life or military matters.

Dazedly looking up at the armoured titan, Michael suddenly realized just how _big _Hakim was, towering over him by at least a metre, if not more. Hakim stared down at him through his helmet visor before he said, "Nice try, but next time use something other than a flashlight." He then backhanded Michael, which while it was rather lackadaisical looking it still picked the boy up off his feet and tossed him a good half metre, the sound of the lad's jaw snapping clearly audible to the frightened onlookers.

Taking one last look, Hakim shrugged and said, "He'll live. Brothers, make sure we take him with us afterward."

Turning back to the crowd, Hakim then said, "Well now that _that _is done with, let's move on to the main event, namely the taking of hostages."

There was a startled gasp and collective cry, but the giant held up his hands in a placating manner and said, "Now, now, when using hostages as living shields it pays to keep them in good health so that any would be rescuers are less inclined to decide that risking their lives to free them is worth it. So do not worry, we will be keeping your children quite safe."

"Children!" Nurlan cried out angrily.

"Yes, any child below the age of about five Earth years will be taken hostage. Children really tug at the heartstrings of sentimental sops like the leaders of your Federation. Now, will this be a safe, civilized transaction or will we have to make some windows and orphans?" Hakim replied amicably.

Nurlan glared at the giant for a moment before he completely broke down and collapsed to his knees. He said dully, "I wish I could fight you, I really do, but I can't even offer my own life to buy the rest of my people theirs, can I?"

"Nope, but the captain is really impressed with your attitude. You're not a coward, but you're not stupid either. We're actually thinking of offering you a job," Hakim said.

"What?" Nurlan asked incredulously.

"The children are coming with us, no questions asked. However, if anyone wishes to _follow_, well who are we to stop them? In fact, we need people to help with working your technology. Now, I will preface it with the point that you're going to be the equivalent of slaves if you follow us, but you will get to see your children on occasion, and if you work hard and earn our trust you might even be freed," Hakim explained.

Looking around the assembled faces, Nurlan dropped his head again and said, "I have failed as a leader and protector for these people, and so if it will make up for it in some small way I will accompany you to ensure our children's safety."

"Good show man! Have a brochure," Hakim then reached into his belt and pulled out a small piece of folded plastic and handed it to Nurlan. On the front was a picture of a smiling, cartoon-like man dressed in a red jumpsuit with grey trim, giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up while in bold English letters the tile was, "Chaos: FUCK YEAH!"

"You have a brochure?" Nurlan asked in bemusement.

"You would not _believe _how useful those things are after you've conquered an area. Actually… yeah, I do believe that as Administrator for honourably surrendering while keeping your population and industry intact you are eligible for one free mutation of your choice off the list in the back. I recommend picking now before you get a random one," Hakim explained.

Turning the brochure over in a sort of bizarre haze, Nurlan looked at it before he furrowed his eyebrows and asked, "Prehensile genitalia?"

"It's a very popular choice, although if I was in your shoes and had my pick from that list it would be awakening psychic potential, but that's just me. Considering that you're probably going to be put on hard labour detail, enhanced endurance or bulging muscles might be a better choice," Hakim said.

"Are you people insane?" Nurlan asked.

"You can't imagine. Anyway, enough dilly-dallying, it's time to start marching everyone who doesn't want to part with the kids into the transports. Come now, I don't want to have to shoot anyone, cleaning blood off a screaming toddler is no fun at all," Hakim said while the rest of his squad began to form a perimeter and herd people out of the settlement.

In the end every couple with young children, most of the elderly, and a few relatives or people of power followed Hakim away, leaving behind the young couples without children yet or the older ones who had children already grown enough to make it past the cut off point. It was a brutal process that separated friends and extended families that had been working to make the colony thrive for nearly two generations, but it was better than having immediate families torn apart.

Nurlan seriously wondered which group was worse off as the shuttle doors sealed, cutting him off from the air of his home.


	12. Unexpected

**Chapter Eleven: Unexpected**

A man sat alone in his jail cell, contemplating life, the universe, and everything. Mostly he was doing this in an attempt to figure out a way to get out of this cell, but the guys in suits in charge of him had made sure that he could not perform even the smallest of spells, keeping his hands bound and his mouth firmly closed. So he was left with trying to figure out how to free himself under such constraints.

He had resorted to silent prayer to the various gods in the hope that someone would decide to help him out for a laugh. So far it wasn't working. Extending out with his mind as far as he could out into the ether, he suddenly heard a small '_Pop!_' in his mind and thought to himself, _Well you've done it now Ethan, you've given yourself a stroke._

For a moment there was a slight ringing before he heard a voice in his head say, "Thank you for calling the gods of Chaos. Due to the increased traffic load from various missions we have implemented an automated system to better serve your needs."

Bloody hell! Even the gods were modernizing these days! An automated call system didn't seem very chaotic to Ethan, but then again he supposed that if they wanted to inflict pain and insanity on the unworthy then this was definitely the way to go.

"If you wish to file a report, please think 'one' now… you have thought 'one'. Taking you to mission report thought mail," the voice on the other end said, causing Ethan to curse. Asking someone to not think of something was a sure fire way to get them to think about it, although he had a sneaking suspicion that this system wasn't exactly made for humans. He would just have to try and keep his mind calm and empty.

Of course at that point one of his captors decided to check in on him and demand to know what he was doing.

"Automated keyword check has detected 'captor' in your report and signs of stress. Have you been captured?" The voice inquired.

_Yes! _Ethan thought.

"Checking… checking… please remain patient… checking… systems indicate that there is minimal Warp interference in your location and you can be safely recovered. Would you like an extraction?" The voice asked.

_Bloody hell yes! _Ethan thought on first impulse before he could realize that he had no idea who exactly was on the other end of the line and maybe sitting in his nice cell would be preferable to being taken somewhere else.

Unfortunately by then it was too late and Ethan Rayne, chaos mage found himself yanked through a hole in reality toward an unknown destination. The transit lasted only a few seconds, during which time he was exposed to the blackest darkness and a sense of coming apart at the seams, as if he were unravelling to fill the void before he was vomited back out into reality.

Of a sort.

Ethan found himself lying naked in a heap on some sort of stone tile floor in a small domed chamber, his magical senses all screaming at him that something was very, _very _wrong with this place. His fears were confirmed a moment later when a group of heavily armoured demons wielding enormous axes entered the room. It was impossible to describe to the uninitiated, but he could taste the fact these creatures were completely unlike the bog standard demons back home.

These were pure blooded demons. These were _Old Ones_, or at the very least the elite soldiers of Old Ones, and as such were about as far out of his league as it could possibly be. On his best day with full planning and the back up of a small army he _might _be able to take one of these monsters, but naked and alone against six he was completely screwed.

The demons looked down at him with some confusion before one of them in particularly ornate armour said, "You're not one of ours."

Ethan was quite amazed that the voice sounded feminine rather than evil, but he did not really have time to remark upon his surprise before he was hauled to his feet, the demon saying, "The gods will want to talk with this one."

Ethan found himself frog-marched out of the bare chamber into a lurid, macabre realm of bizarrely twisting corridors adorned with strange sigils made of writhing, viridescent flames and solid blocks of coruscating light. Every colour imaginable, and a few that weren't, were present in abundance. The whole place was a riot for the senses.

As the soldier demons carried him along, the population density began to increase. There were all sorts of creatures, but the terrifying thing was that aside from a profusion of the demonic there were also a huge number of humans of every possible description going about various forms of business, bearing the sort of marks that showed that they had dedicated themselves completely and utterly to whatever deities these demons served. He even saw several people walking around who were clearly possessed.

Eventually they brought him before a set of great metal doors that had to be at least ten metres across and forty high, constructed of iron, brass, gold, and what appeared to be flesh and set with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires to create a grotesque series of scenes that Ethan could not comprehend but seemed to involve excessive amounts of dismemberment.

With barely even a creak the great doors opened, revealing a swirling maelstrom on the other side, at the centre of which was an enormous stepped pyramidal structure upon the top of which was an enormous throne structure. Four figures were upon the throne, three of them sitting upon the legs or lap of the fourth.

When the figures _had _such things as laps and legs.

It was impossible to describe them properly, for each moment they were something different, and many of their forms defied human definition, but one common motif was of a man in his prime with three beautiful women, a pleased sneer upon his face.

As they approached, the forms stabilized, presumably for Ethan's benefit. The four figures disentangled themselves from each other, allowing them to rise, the man coming to the forefront to take a closer look at Ethan.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" The man asked. From his gaze Ethan felt that he probably already knew everything there was to know from Ethan, but wanted to hear it for the benefit of the others in the court.

"We found him in one of the emergency recovery chambers," the lead guard stated.

Feeling the eyes turn upon him seeking an explanation, Ethan stuttered out, "I… ah… appear to have… well… err… called the wrong number, magically speaking. Terrible misunderstanding you see, and… well… I… uh… yes. Yes. Total misunderstanding."

"Your coming here was foreseen, Ethan Rayne," the man stated.

"Bullshit," one of the women behind him, a redhead, stated.

Turning upon her in annoyance, the man said, "Dear, I'm trying to cow the mortal here, and you're not helping me maintain the proper air of all knowing superiority."

"All knowing… _sure… _if you were really all knowing then why was it that…" The red head began before he cut her off.

"_Not _the time my dear, not the fucking time," the man said.

The purple haired one, who appeared as a sexy, _sexy _MILF raised a finger and said, "Actually, today's orgy is scheduled in five minutes."

The man paused before conjuring up a pocket watch and saying, "Well what do you know?"

"See? Not all knowing," the red head pointed out.

"It is his brand of prop humour," the blue haired albino woman said.

"Shut it," the red head spat.

"If this is a bad time I can come back later," Ethan suggested.

Glancing back at him, the man said, "You wish. Anyway, since someone had to go and ruin my aura of omniscience, I'll get right to the point. You weren't _supposed _to be able to get into that line and that error was fixed but we are very impressed nonetheless… unless of course you _were _and I'm just fucking with your mind."

"Pro-tip, he probably _is _fucking with your mind either way," the red head pointed out.

Glancing back at her to give her a baleful stare, he returned his attention to Ethan and said, "Getting back to the topic at hand, we would like to offer you a job Mr. Rayne. As a so-called worshipper of chaos, we would like to introduce you to the benefits of big 'C' Chaos and hope that you will take them back to your home dimension."

"Uh…" Ethan said nervously.

"You don't have to answer now, the orgy is getting ready to start, so maybe you should tell us then," the man said, waving his hand to beckon forth a large group of scantily clad women. Smiling, he told them, "Please take very good care of our guest here."

Ethan felt like the man who had jumped out of a plane without a parachute only to discover that his fall was broken by landing in a pool at the Playboy mansion.

* * *

Somewhere across the multiverse a dark command room only vaguely illuminated by the monitors of various screens suddenly lit up with various warning lights and the low chatter of technicians going about their work was drowned out by warning klaxons suddenly activating. There was an immediate, brief panic as everyone tried to figure out what was going on before professionalism kicked in and they began sorting out what had tripped all of their alarms.

"Incoming transdimensional shock wave!" One of the technicians announced.

"Inform the fleet," the officer on duty ordered. "Do we have a source yet?"

"It's coming from the direction of Wild Space!" One of the technicians announced.

Everyone felt a shiver at that announcement. Wild Space was the border land of universes about the horrific realm known as Chaotic Space. Chaotic Space had been sealed off an unknown number of eons ago by some ancient people, but despite their skills the almost non-stop dimensional rifts within Chaotic Space had a tendency to bleed out into the surrounding realities, making navigation in the dimensional sea a trying task. For the most part Wild Space never saw patrols, making it something of a haven for pirates and outlaws insane enough to take the risks.

That said a dimensional rift had not been recorded in Wild Space for hundreds of years. It required an enormous amount of energy to disturb the dimensional sea in any significant way, and Wild Space was not sufficiently disturbed to normally generate those sorts of forces.

The entire command room rumbled as the shockwave passed over their observation post, but they already braced for impact and were on a fixed point, so the fact that they felt anything at all was worrying.

"Shock wave has passed, communications are returning. Beginning triangulation with other outposts…" someone said.

There was a gasp of horror as the results were displayed upon the main holographic projector. Entire universes were presented as points of light like stars in the sky trailing tangled webs of unrealized timelines behind them, creating the impression of a constellation of jellyfish floating in the void, forming great arms and clusters of being.

And shunted off to one side, out on a branch of existence far from everything else, was the stain that was Chaotic Space, sealed off from everything else by the great works of an elder civilization. And the triangulations showed that the shock wave had come from _within _that damned place. Already their sensors were picking up tangled skeins of madness reaching out, ensnaring other cosmoses within Wild Space.

The officer did the only thing he could. He said to his communications officer, "Get me the TSAB Headquarters."


	13. Toil

EDIT: Sorry, I think the scroll wheel slipped so for a while this was the wrong chapter. I'll probably have another one for you as apology later tonight.

**Chapter Twelve: Toil**

Anise stared at the computer terminal with weariness and some degree of self-disgust. Freya tried to console her, but was too tired and busy trying to keep their eyes open to be of much help. Still, the fact that her host was trying to calm her down was enough to get Anise to settle down a bit.

The Tok'ra were doomed, that was the only way to put it. They had not had an influx of fresh symbiotes in thousands of years, and with the confirmed death of Egeria a few years ago the Tok'ra had truly known that they were amongst the dying. The days of their species were numbered, and the truly sad thing was that their cousins had a chance of outliving them if they learned to keep their heads down. At least they had queens so they could propagate their numbers.

And there was nothing they could do about it.

Between Anise and Freya they were not quite sure where the thought came from, just that from the ether they suddenly were struck with an idea. An incredible idea that gave them pause for a moment.

They brought up the various genetic maps they had access to and began to look at them intently. Perhaps Egeria had one last gift to give the Tok'ra… yes… yes… she could see it now. It was all so simple…

Anise and Freya had been up for a long time already, but they suddenly had a burst of energy as they began to work, doing all of the things that would allow them to complete their idea. Not only did they have boundless energy, but all of the stumbling blocks they expected to meet crumbled as they worked, complex knots untangling before them. It was incredible.

As they worked, they never saw the shadow flickering across the room, or the way it seemed to be whispering to them, telling them the answers when they could not think of one, and when they left the theoretical and actually began mixing chemicals, the shadow seemed to make sure that everything worked the way it should… or in some cases the way it _shouldn't_.

And then they had it. They had it in their hands. A serum that would, theoretically, transform a regular symbiote into a queen capable of reproducing and continuing the Tok'ra as a species. It would also help the Free Jaffa immeasurably, as Tretonin production was still lagging badly behind eventual demand, but access to friendly Tok'ra larva would help them to make the switch.

All that was needed was a test subject.

The shadow whispered into their minds, telling them that there was no better subject than them. For the briefest of moments their scientific instincts rebelled against the impulse, but those thoughts were quickly overwhelmed with a rush of pride and vanity. The serum was perfect! They had made it perfect, and their reward should be to become the new queen for the Tok'ra!

Before self-preservation instincts could kick in again, they downed the serum with one quick gulp.

Only once it was within their system did they realize that they had just made a _huge _mistake.

* * *

"Umm… I don't mean to be presumptuous, but was there a mistake at the printers?" Nurlan asked meekly to the young woman assigned as the den mother for the hostage children. While Nurlan wasn't amongst those who had regular contact with the children, the few women who had been allowed to remain as caregivers usually used him as an in between with their Chaos captors. The fact that most of them were so mutilated that it was impossible to tell their species probably had something to do with it.

The young woman, a master chief petty officer named Francine who apparently considered flaying herself repeatedly and wearing her own skin a fashion statement, looked at the items in question and asked, "Do you have a problem with _Momma Will Kill for You _or _Oh the Things You'll Crush_?"

"Aren't they a little violent for children?" Nurlan asked.

"Come on, we went to a lot of trouble to remember these books for the kids, and besides, they're classics… sort of… I'll admit they haven't been around _that _long, but I mean, I read these books to _my _kids when they were babies," Francine replied.

Nurlan blinked and looked at her before he asked, "You have children?"

"A boy and a girl so far, and I hope to have more when this tour is over," Francine stated proudly.

"And you read to them about disembowelling people or how they could grow up to become warlords?" Nurlan asked, horrified.

"Who wouldn't kill for their children or want them to grow up strong?" Francine asked, equally horrified in her own way.

"Well… uh… your culture is very different from ours. I don't think even the Klingons are this violent," Nurlan stated.

Shrugging, Francine replied, "We are who we are. We live in a world of emotion, and we feel everything so intensely. We love our children with every drop of our souls, and we will rain down with great anger and vengeance any who would attempt to poison or destroy our children. I devoted myself to Asukhon shortly after my first child was born, for she is the patron of young mothers and defender of babies and toddlers."

"I thought she was a war god," Nurlan asked, dredging up what little knowledge he had of these people's macabre pantheon of deities.

Francine paused and thought for a moment before she said, "Imagine if you will an army of mother grizzly bears trying to get to their cubs, and you will get a small inkling of the way Asukhon and her followers wage war. Brutal, direct, and designed to put down as many motherfuckers as quickly as possible so that they will never, _ever _rise to threaten our cubs again."

Nurlan was disquiet for a moment before he asked, "So what do you think about this whole abduction thing your superiors are doing?"

"I like it," Francine said with a grin, showing off her sharpened teeth. "Your Federation needs a swift kick in the ass to remind them that some things are worth fighting for, worth dying for. I fight for my children, and I want to see others fight for _their _children, not just roll over and die, even if we're on opposite sides," Francine said.

"So you don't think what I did was a good idea?" Nurlan inquired timidly.

"Are you kidding? Surrendering was the _best _option you had. There's fighting ferociously with no holding back, and then there's just being _stupid_. You're still alive and your kids are still alive, that means you still have a chance of kicking the shit out of us one day and getting them the fuck away from us," Francine said.

Nurlan furrowed his brows and said, "You love children and yet you agree with kidnapping them. You espouse violent action and yet speak of restraint. Are these not contradictory?"

Shaking her head, Francine said, "Your Federation really has cut off the balls of your people, hasn't it? We don't _harm _kids, we might use them as human shields, but we hate hurting them physical, emotional, or psychologically. We have some _huge _issues with that sort of thing. We believe that when you fight you shouldn't hold anything back, but we believe that until you actually _start _to fight you should use restraint and careful judgement."

Nurlan supposed that that made some sense, but he still could not really understand these creatures, they were like night and day to the culture of Federation. Where the Federation was calm, sober, and rational, these people were wild, mad, and insane. Of course, where the Federation was sluggish, detached, and sometimes downright apathetic towards things these creatures were quick, active, and passionate about everything they did.

Having given him a few moments to absorb that, Francine said, "Well, now that we have that issue sorted out, back to work with you."

Sighing, Nurlan shouldered his pick-axe and said, "I'm going, I'm going, no need to get out the whip."

Again, these people were paradoxical, in that while they had technology far beyond anything the Federation could even dream of, they also forced those they had abducted into brute manual labour and used lashing and beatings to get what they wanted. Although the manual labour bit was somewhat understandable as they had more bodies than mining gear and they were on a bit of a schedule.

The innermost moon of Syracuse was being mined out to provide more extensive habitation for the natives of the dying world. Already many of the primitive aliens were being transported off their world and brought to the habitats formerly inhabited by the Federation research team, or stationed aboard the Cardassian ships that had been captured. Still, that was a population of a few thousand out of millions, much more room was needed.

So they had begun to dig. Syracusans that could be trained received preferential treatment and usually got the better equipment, but as more gear was replicated it trickled down to the captured Federation personnel. Nurlan had refused any of the mining lasers or plasma cutters, saying that until everyone else had one he would suffer with them and swing a pick at the hard stone walls. It had been becoming frighteningly easier as time had worn on, and he knew that his body was being changed by the power of Chaos. Genetic engineering and even certain forms of genetic therapy was verboten in the Federation, and yet with no apparent mechanism these beings of Chaos were twisting his body into something new, something that could swing a pick axe hard enough and repeatedly enough that he was starting to outperform some of the people with advanced equipment.

It terrified him on a fundamental level.

It terrified him because not only was his body changing, but he was starting to _like _it, starting to enjoy the feeling of power rippling through his body as he drove his pick into the stone and watched it crumble before him. These creatures were trying to turn him into one of them.

And it was working.

* * *

Shortly after meeting with Prometheus and him giving them the technical and industrial plans for the fabrication of a form of personal body armour that could shrug off a staff weapon blast with a reasonable degree of success and would laugh at the armour piercing rounds of most personal weapons on Earth, the enigmatic creature had suggested that SG-1 take a return visit to P4X K79E.

After checking the planet with a MALP, the mission had been required as everyone wanted to know what the hell had happened to the world. It wasn't everyday that a once temperate world became a barren wasteland with no apparent sun providing the scarlet illumination.

While the MALP's sensors had not detected any toxic chemicals in the air, the members of SG-1 immediately wished that they had brought along full NBC gear, for the smell was revolting, the sort of iron and copper scent of spilled blood, but it permeated everything in sight. Everyone had immediately donned gas hoods just to be safe, but even those were insufficient to block out that cloying stench.

The ground had also changed, becoming hard, scorched glass that sliced at their boots. There were signs that some people had been walking on the ruined landscape in bare feet, leaving behind trails of blood. And there were a lot of trails, all leading in one direction. Following along, SG-1 rounded a hill and discovered just how horrific this world had become.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were labouring to craft some enormous effigy in the landscape, carving out an enormous pit in the rock in the shape of some sort of humanoid figure. Already a scaffold was going up over the pit, presumably the top half of whatever mould they were making. But only half the people were working on the mould, the rest were lining up, whipping themselves with cat-o-nine-tails and screaming out devotions as they approached the pit. And once they arrived at the pit they knelt upon a block of solid obsidian and had their heads swiftly cut off by an axe wielding executioner.

Somehow, that was _not _the worst part. After the headless corpses were drained of their blood they were hauled to the back of the line where the bodies began to twitch and regenerate, until finally the people gathered up the whips still clutched in their hands and got back in line to do it all over again. Repeatedly torturing someone to death and then resurrecting them with a sarcophagus was something that SG-1 could understand, but this self-inflicted monstrosity was so far beyond them…

"You like?" A voice behind them asked. Whirling about, weapons at the ready, they discovered a bizarre, grotesque creature had somehow just appeared behind them. It was… it was… it…

It wasn't actually attacking them, just staring at them with a strange, almost child-like expression. That was a start at least as their brains tried to process what exactly they were seeing.

Finally, after several seconds of staring agape at it, the details began to work out. The only relatively constant thing about the creature was that it was a humanoid skeleton about five metres tall, although it was hunched down to stare at their level. Rather than being solid though, the individual bones were made out of collections of skulls or parts of skulls, all stained blood red. The skulls were fused into solid masses in places and lashed together in others with long, grotesque tongues that continued to twitch and writhe. Overlaying these 'bones' were various muscles and tissue that only seemed to appear when they were needed, materializing out of thin air and decaying away when no longer required. Only the face seemed to stick around for long, but even then the flesh seemed to have been stapled onto the head.

For a long moment there was silence as the creature stared at them curiously before it frowned and said, "You don't like. You don't like momma's work."


	14. Transplant

**Chapter Thirteen: Transplant**

Ah, it was good to be home! While it had been fun in the Palace of the Gods, more fun than a berk like him deserved really, everything came with a price that needed paying. Ethan was currently working to pay off his time of debauchery amongst a group of people who had a library dedicated to their books on the subject. Fortunately for Ethan, he was one of those rare, lucky individuals who had discovered a career where he could do what he loved and get paid for it. In exchange for power and the chance to bang the hottest birds an entire dimension had to offer, all he had to do was spread chaos. Not even big C Chaos, just chaos and mayhem in general! He had more or less been given free rein to cause trouble back home whatever way he wanted.

Best of all, he had a chance to both make up for a few of his earlier indiscretions and to shake some of his pursuers. The gods had some rather interesting abilities with regard to time, and boy had that been a trip trying to wrap his head around how they had come to be! But that meant that they had deposited him not back in his cell with the fine blokes of the US Military after his little prank with Ripper, but instead he was back in time a few years, just a few days before one of his crowning moments as a chaos mage.

It had been quite a shock to see his younger self prancing about, and if not for the assurance by the gods that he existed outside normal causality, he would have been rather wary of attempting anything like this, although the thought of the damage he could do with a temporal paradox did intrigue him on some levels. Still, he had taken great pains to avoid letting his other self know of his presence.

That would spoil the joke!

Unbeknownst to the younger Ethan, the shipment of costumes he intended to enchant had been intercepted and modified. The gods had given him a set of symbols, no real explanation as to their meaning, and the order to distribute them discretely amongst the costumes. Their explanation had been breathtakingly simple really. The original spell had been based upon the association of the costumes with concepts: a gun does not make a soldier and a dress does not make a lady. By adding the symbols extra energy could be drawn into the spell and it could travel beyond its bounds. The effects would be… unpredictable.

Just the way Ethan wanted it.

Of course, he had been more or less in the dark about which symbols to use, but he had decided to go with the general rule that the more bestial looking the symbols went on the monster costumes while the more human ones went on the various props and costumes that would not produce such an effect. Of course, it was just guesswork, and the results could be quite interesting.

As night fell and all of the kiddies went out on the street, Ethan sat a good distance away from his shop on the roof of a small convenience store where he had a good view of the action. By his measure his younger self should be completing the ritual right about…

Now.

He could feel the waves of magic as old Janus did his handiwork, and then the unexpected surge of power as his alterations threw a monkey-wrench into the works, tapping into a source of power more raw and wild than anything this world had ever seen. Magic could do terrible things to the minds and bodies of the unprepared, but it rarely tried to actively _eat _the practitioners. The admixture of this universe's magic and the power of the Warp was… unstable, to say the least.

As the flaming remains of the costume shop rained down over the town, Ethan knew that all of his old pals looking to make him pay up his debts would now think him part of the fine ash floating the air, which was technically true, but it meant that Ethan now had an extra layer of secrecy and thus protection. He idly mused about what would happen to the spell now that the bust of Janus had been destroyed, but it seemed that the raw cable of energy was still connected to the costumes and was taking its energy now directly from either the Hellmouth, the Warp, or some combination of the two.

_This _would make things interesting.

Unbeknownst to Ethan, the list of symbols provided to him had primarily been drawn from Imperial and Orkish sources, with a bit of Eldar and Dark Eldar iconography thrown in for good measure... with one notable exception, and even that had originally been Imperial. The mishmash of ideas and metaphors produced random results, although in general there were suddenly a huge number of waist high orks running about smashing, stomping, chopping, and shooting things as their kind was wont to do, along with numerous Imperial citizens of varying description. There were however three very important people affected by the spell.

The spell struck a young woman wearing the long, exquisite dress of high nobility, and under normal circumstances would have transformed her into the sort of brain dead sop who would have been worse than useless under these sorts of circumstances, but included with the dress had been a small signet ring with a stylized 'I'. Suddenly the dress became an order of magnitude more baroque and complex while also concealing the sort of body armour that would shrug off .50 bullets and a variety of compact weapons. And instead of emptying a mind of all capacity for active thought and assertion, it was filled with the sort of cutthroat, razor sharp intellect that could survive the dangers of the Imperial Inquisition for a century.

The spell had a bit more work with another young woman nearby, as the metaphors were a bit more stretched, but the semi-sentient energies quickly found the form that they desired. The sheet she had draped over herself was meant to represent a ghost, but in one corner the symbol of the Officio Assassinorum changed the form significantly, from a literal spectre into a metaphorical one. But which temple? As the spell sought more information, it noted that the woman underneath was wearing clothing significantly different from the simple sheet expressed outwardly. A ghostly assassin that wore a different form on the outside from the inside. The spell had enough to work with and wrapped the young woman in the sheet, morphing it into a form fitting uniform that could change shape along with the body underneath. Weapons materialized about her as the spell made the finishing touches on the Callidus Assassin.

And then there was the final member of the group, a young man dressed as a soldier bearing a plastic gun with a small mark hidden upon its surface. This was perhaps the hardest one for the spell to work with as it needed to do the most modification. Had Ethan chosen differently then the young man probably would have ended up just another Ork or Guardsman, but the symbol demanded something more. The gun warped and changed, growing larger and more powerful to fit with the pride and honour associated with the symbol.

As the spell did its work, its energies danced up and down the continuity of the young man's life, finding the hardships he faced and the stoicism in which he met them, even against impossible odds, and his maiming against a superior foe in the future. It made a decision. The young man's honour, courage, and loyalty in the face of the monstrous could only truly be expressed by one member of the group to which the symbol upon his gun belonged.

The spell changed him.

* * *

Willow's mind was afire as she struggled with the memories of two lives, to try and reconcile what was happening. Her own mind had been shoved to the background, to watch as another entity took over, but unfortunately that entity was one used to and accustomed to creating, assuming, and discarding identities at will while keeping track of her own core personality.

Sadly for the assassin known as Natalie she almost immediately realized that _she _was the false identity and that the true identity was the one shoved into the background. As she did not really know what was going on her training immediately prompted her to bring forward the true personality to assess the situation. Unfortunately Willow did not have the proper knowledge on how to control the polymorphine in her blood, and the spell resisted the transfer, forcing a war between mind, body, and soul as all three struggled for dominance, with ironically the mind and soul each trying to shove responsibility upon the other.

Through the haze and pain of this mental and physical struggle, a harsh female voice barked, "Assassin! By order of His Imperial Majesty's Most Holy Inquisition come here!"

With survival instincts to control the polymorphine, the willing of spell, Willow herself, and now obedience training all kicking in, Natalie immediately snapped to attention and focused upon the one who claimed to be an Inquisitor. The true identity told her, "That's Buffy! Where did she get that laser pistol? Or learn to use it like that?"

While Willow thought about that Natalie focused upon the numerous orks swarming about the Lady Inquisitor. The Inquisitor was engaged in close combat with the greenskins and thus use of the neural shredder would be ill advised. A quick analysis however showed that the phase sword and poisoned blades would be sufficient against this mass of gretchin.

The inner voice screamed that they were just children, under a spell like them, causing Natalie some confusion. Did the operational parameters call for minimal casualties? Such things were not unheard of, but holding back against ensorcelled orks seemed like an unlikely order.

While this internal conversation was taking place inhumanly fast reflexes and instincts took over as the assassin crashed into greenskin horde, phase sword dancing about and inflicting death and destruction while poison tipped blades found their way into soft flesh, adding to the deadly toll the Inquisitor's laspistol was inflicting upon the horde. The inner voice screamed to stop, but within a few seconds it was all over.

Until of course the corpses on the ground began to melt away into mist, revealing human children from the broken pile of greenskins, unconscious but otherwise unharmed and intact.

Natalie would have blinked in surprise had such an emotional response been part of her personality that had not been scrubbed clean by years of training. So _this _was what Willow had been talking about. This also explained the confusion. Apparently she was under the effect of some foul witchery too.

Having access to some of Natalie's memories, Willow wisely failed to comment on the witchery remark. What she did manage to do however was force Natalie to grab the Inquisitor's hand as she moved to level her gun on the sleeping children and finish what was started.

"Stop," they ordered, Natalie amazed at the audacity of telling an Inquisitor what to do and Willow amazed that she was actually fast and strong enough to stop Buffy from what she was attempting to do.

The Inquisitor glared daggers at them and said venomously, "You _dare _to give orders to an Inquisitor? I'll have you executed for this!"

Natalie listened to what Willow had to say for a moment before she said, "You are not an Inquisitor; you are a changeling as I am." As punctuation she morphed her features to match those of the Inquisitor perfectly for a moment before shifting back.

The woman's fury deepened and she hissed, "You presumptuous bitch!" She then turned her hand slightly to present the face of a large ring on her hand to Natalie/Willow. Natalie knew what a digital weapon was and thus had enough time to dodge the blast, although at such short range avoiding the strike from a plasma based digital weapon was rather difficult, forcing her to leap back to avoid the splash of ravenous energy.

However, before the Inquisitor could call upon any other tricks, a gauntleted hand grabbed her wrist and gently yet firmly pulled her away. Both assassin and inquisitor turned their attention towards this new comer and immediately boggled in religious confusion at the being they saw standing before them.

It wasn't quite right, at least according to the art, the spell incapable of causing the full suite of physical changes, instead retaining the majority of the features, but the spirit inhabiting the body shone through nonetheless and both of them could immediately identify the deific being that had ended their conflict by that alone.

Oh, and the armour and wings didn't hurt the identification either.

"Sanguinius!" Both cried out in awe.

Grinning sadly, the Angel said, "I am afraid that the assassin is correct good lady, in that you are both changelings, as am I. That ground transport over there has a mirrored surface, gaze into it and tell me what you see good lady."

Released from the demigod's grip, the Inquisitor went over to the vehicle and looked into the mirror mounted on the side and gasped at what she saw. "What sorcery is this? This is not my face!"

Nodding, the Angel said, "Sorcery indeed. Someone has crafted an awful spell that has bound our likenesses to the bodies of the innocent for their own sick amusement. I detect the foul works of Chaos here."

"What… what are we?" The Inquisitor asked, clearly shaken at the implications of this. She had fought her whole life to keep free of the taint of Chaos and heresy, only now to find herself the product of it.

"We are fleeting things, abominations in truth, but that does not mean we cannot aid those of this world. We must destroy this spell and free all of those ensnared by its foulness. It will unfortunately mean the end of our own existences, but that is a small price to pay to restore order and peace to this place," Sanguinius explained.

"How must we do that Lord Primarch?" The Inquisitor asked.

A dark look crossed over Sanguinius' face and he said, "We must destroy the focus of the spell, a task that will require all of us but that none of us will achieve."

"Is this one of your fabled visions Lord Primarch?" The Inquisitor humbly inquired.

"It is, but even if we fall victory is not impossible. Come, we must go, every moment we wait the destruction grows worse," Sanguinius ordered, and Inquisitor and assassin fell in behind him, honoured to know that they could serve unto death at the side of the Emperor's most beloved son.

* * *

In the ruins of the costume shop the only unsold prop sat in a pile of ash on the ground. A set of Freddy Krueger style claws, they had the addition of a single staring eye, the Eye of Terra. Without the bust of Janus to serve as the focus for the spell, the writhing energies had grounded themselves in the claw. With no costume to form, the torrent of power flowing through the prop was forcing the formation of something, someone, that had caused the deaths of trillions the last time he had been counted amongst the living.

Horus was rising.


	15. Throw Down

**Chapter Fourteen: Throw Down**

It was a bad day to be a member of the supernatural community. Halloween was _supposed _to be their off night, the one time of the year where they could put their apocalyptic plans on hold, kick back with a beer and have a poker game and not get any funny looks from their peers. It hadn't exactly been always like that, but with so many human kids running about there had been a mutual agreement amongst the various demons and such that unless they wanted to draw attention to themselves and bring down the full wrath of several billion pissed off people, hunting on Halloween was a bad idea.

Unfortunately tonight some tosser had gone and pulled some _seriously _bad mojo and now Spike was trying to keep Drusilla from tearing herself apart in a fit as whatever magic was at work interacted badly with her already screwed up head. Finally the spasms seemed to subside, although perhaps that was because she was locked in tetanus, her back arched painfully while her eyes were tiny pinpricks surrounded by white.

As Spike tried to keep her, still, he heard a whimper that sounded like a word escape from her clenched jaw. Leaning in closer, he heard her squeaking out, "…kitten no more… tiger! Tiger! Tiger has wings. Tiger… tiger… stop the One Who Sees! Stop her! She'll kill us all!"

Spike rolled this around in his mind for a moment, trying to divine some meaning from the madness. One thing he did know was that Dru liked to call that twit who hung around with the Slayer 'kitten', so he supposed that some thick headed berk was trying to end the world again and the Slayer and her little band of dimwits were involved.

Spike sighed. He hated it when some idiot got it in their head that they should go beyond talking tough and actually try to end the world with all of its lovely walking meals and football games and pints of beer and… sigh… and of course he had to act like a complete tosser and actually have to team up with the good guys to try and stop the idiots. Unlife could be so trying at times.

Pointing to some of his best muscle, Spike said, "Alright, you lot, you're with me, the rest of you stay here and guard Dru. Some idiot is trying to muscle in on our turf and we're going to have to throw them out on their ears. The Slayer and her mates are probably already trying to give the berk a good thrashing but I just see that as chance to kill two birds with one stone."

Thus Spike stepped out into the violence of the night.

* * *

Iral crouched over the body of the mon-keigh bitch he had stalked down, watching as she faded in and out of consciousness from the pain of having her face flayed off. Such a pretty little thing she had been too, which made her screams all the more delicious. She would last a good while yet too, for Iral had been exceedingly careful to not touch any of the larger blood vessels.

Hmmm… what to do next? The mon-keigh body had so many spare parts she could lose a few more and still survive. Perhaps… perhaps…

"Cease your playing dark one," an imperious female voice said behind Iral. Amazed that he could be surprised, he whirled about whilst drawing in the shadows to his frame. Standing behind him, well out of range of his knives, was an accursed member of his kin from a Craftworld, a Farseer if he had the iconography right.

The Farseer held up a hand and said, "If you have it within you to do so, I would speak to you in peace dark one. What I have to say concerns us both."

Iral considered it for a moment. If he could close with the witch he knew he could take her, but the blasted seer had judged him perfectly and she could no doubt summon forth some damnable magic to prevent him from completing any strike he made. Hissing angrily, he said, "Say your words witch."

"In your play have you stopped to consider _why _we are here on this world, surrounded by humans and greenskins?" The Farseer asked.

Iral grumbled but admitted, "No."

"Look at yourself in that piece of glass over there," the Farseer commanded, pointing to a pile of shard from a shattered window.

Iral considered this for a moment before he slowly backed up towards the glass, never taking his eyes off the Farseer until he delicately picked up one of the pieces and glanced at it with one eye. He immediately devoted his entire attention to the dim half reflection he saw there.

_This is not my face!_

Gone were his proud, noble Eldar features, so sharp and cruel, to be replaced by the disgusting, fatty softness of a mon-keigh child. He touched his features and for the first time noted that beneath his gloves his fingers were the fat, stubby digits of a human as well.

"What trickery is this witch?" Iral wailed.

"Not mine. Some fool has summoned us here and bound our spirits to these disgusting mon-keigh bodies," the Farseer explained.

"I will eviscerate the one who has done this to me!" Iral cried out in fury.

"And then what? And then what dark one? When the spell that binds us ends, what will happen to us? Will we return to our bodies? Will we have bodies to return to? Or will we be destroyed?" The Farseer asked.

That gave Iral pause. If there was one thing all Eldar were after the birth of She Who Thirsts, it was survivors. The Dark Eldar and their Craftworld brethren took very different paths and hated the other for it, but they both clung to their existences with everything they had.

"Do you know witch?" Iral asked.

"I do not. I will need time to examine the spell, to see what it will do, but there are already those on the move that wish to end it, to end us. That cannot come to pass until we can be sure we will not be extinguished along with the spell… or worse," the Farseer explained.

"And you wish my help," Iral asked.

"It is preferable to trying to get the mon-keigh to be reasonable," the Farseer said contemptuously.

"Very well witch, but know that I am watching you," Iral said as he stood up.

"As am I dark one, as am I. Come now though, we must make to the centre of this magic and stop those who would end it and us," the Farseer explained.

* * *

Sunnydale was burning, the orks having gone on a rampage and engaged in numerous fights with everything that moved and wasn't an ork, and even some things that _were _orks. While those wearing enchanted costumes were simply knocked out when their false forms were killed, those not affected by the spell were not so lucky, and already the town stunk strongly of blood and smoke.

Willow mused within Natalie that _this _would take quite a bit of explaining to do tomorrow.

Already the tides were turning against the forces of destruction. Sanguinius had taken to the air a short time ago and let out a call to rally all forces loyal to the Emperor to him. Already they were receiving an influx of people from all walks of Imperial life, from hive city drudges and mutants to robed Techpriests and members of the Ecclesiarchy, all drawn by the promise of the Angel.

While Natalie took up the point, slipping from shadow to shadow, Sanguinius and the Inquisitor, named Bella, organized what they had to work with into a fighting force. Sanguinius alone was probably enough to win the day, but with his expert leadership he soon had a formidable force organized, and they began to drive into the heart of the blazing city, slaying everything that stood in their way, liberating many from the curse upon them.

Wiping out an entire squad of rampaging greenskins with her neural shredder, Natalie watched as Sanguinius' face turned increasingly sombre and furious as they approached the centre of the storm. There was something waiting for the Lord Primarch, she could tell.

Finally he called a stop and said, "Come out of hiding jester."

Dropping out of the shadows a grotesquely costumed figure hiding behind a ghoulish mask stalked towards a short distance before stopping and saying, "Most impressive winged one, most impressive indeed."

"Say your piece jester, time grows short," Sanguinius ordered wearily.

"It does. I have only this to tell to you," the Harlequin said before launching forward into the crowd about Sanguinius, shuriken pistol hissing death and its Harlequin's Kiss leaving liquefied remains behind as the alien ripped into the ranks with impossible speed and grace. Sanguinius and Natalie both became a blur of motion as they rushed to stop the Harlequin, but it was already too late for the majority of those they had gathered about them.

Sanguinius was the first to reach the agile Eldar, at which point the creature discovered that the fury of a Primarch made its own power seem truly pitiful indeed. With a single hand Sanguinius grabbed the Harlequin and dashed it against the ground, the force of the impact punching a hole down to the sewer beneath. As the magic that had given life to the Harlequin in this world faded, it did not even need to dissolve the body into a mist first the Eldar was so utterly destroyed by the force of the blow.

Glancing about, Sanguinius found that only Natalie and Lady Bella were still fit to continue, the rest having been reverted back to their original forms by the treacherous xeno. He then muttered darkly under his breath, such that only Natalie could hear, and even then she doubted she should have, "Thank you."

Forming up, he glanced at the two women still at his side and said, "Come, the final battle lies ahead of us. Two more of that creature's cowardly kind are still out there, and they make for the same objective as us. You two must stop them while I handle what is to come."

Nodding, assassin and Inquisitor took up flanking positions as they wondered what was to come next. Turning a corner onto a street, they discovered the remains of an entire block of buildings set on fire by the obliteration of what had once been the costume shop. And standing at the centre of the inferno…

Natalie and Bella both made the sign of the Aquila in warding as Sanguinius bellowed out, "_HORUS!_"

The devil himself turned upon the group, all four metres of him. Unlike Sanguinius, his power was not restricted by being confined to a merely human frame, and was instead being incarnated into the vile creature that had laid siege to Terra. His form still flickered at times, still not full manifest, but once complete this world would not stand a chance against the greatest monstrosity Chaos had ever spawned.

"Well, well, it seems that one of my little brothers followed me through the void to this place. Only a pale shadow of him it would seem," Horus said with a sneer.

Glancing at the women at his side, Sanguinius said, "Stop the Eldar, you are no match for him. Stop them with your life, and do _not _let the witch speak."

Then with a roar and a rush of his wings, Sanguinius launched himself at the monster that commanded this holocaust, bellowing a war cry. For a moment the two watched transfixed as the two deities collided, the impact of their weapons and their armoured bodies shaking the earth.

And then the Eldar arrived on scene, a Farseer and a Mandrake. The Farseer hissed and cried out, "You fools! You'll kill us all!"

Lady Bella glanced at Natalie and said, "You deal with the Mandrake, I'll take out the witch."

Natalie agreed and sprinted off to take care of the Dark Eldar hunter. Bella immediately got the Farseer's attention by shooting her in the side of the head with her lasgun. While the alien armour protected the prophetic witch, it certainly forced her to focus upon the Inquisitor. Natalie soon lost track of their battle though as she leapt into close combat with the Mandrake.

Imperial Callidus Assassin versus Dark Eldar Mandrake, it was one of those rare, fabled duels of the ghost versus the shadow as they both sought to tear the other apart. No mortal human could follow their blazingly fast moves as they lunged, spun, countered, and parried. Between them, Natalie probably had a slight advantage as she only needed to be lucky once with her phase blade and she could disarm her opponent, but they were nearly evenly matched in terms of skill and dexterity, and the way the Mandrake could cloak itself in shadows gave it an extra layer of protection that evened the fight just enough to keep it from being over in an instant.

Of course, this fight was utterly overshadowed by the duel of the Primarchs, the rematch of the aeons as Horus and Sanguinius laid into one another with the sort of fury that blew out flames with the shock of impact and turned concrete into fine powder. Arcs of lightning danced off the interaction of power weapons, and sparks were thrown up from armour as actual hits were landed.

Throwing Sanguinius off of him, Horus sneered and said, "You are weak brother! I will kill you this time as surely as I did the last time we fought!"

Spreading his wings wide, Sanguinius turned a tumble into a graceful landing and bringing his own weapon to bear, he said, "It is true brother that this frame cannot bear all of my strength, but this is not the last time we fought. You are weaker as well, and I have not exhausted all of my strength slaying your minions for weeks on end without rest. Come, let us finish this!"

Grasping his blood red sword with both hands, Sanguinius brought it up to a ready position and hurled himself once more at Horus, the Angel once more hurling himself as a thunderbolt at the Devil who betrayed their father. Horus swung his mighty power maul at the oncoming charge and the two godly weapons met, energy crackling between them, until, with a mighty explosion, Horus' weapon shattered. Continuing forward, Sanguinius rammed an armoured shoulder into his brother's chest. With an awful crack of ceramite and adamantium Sanguinius' shoulder pad shattered while Horus' breastplate cracked down the middle. The Angel, having the much smaller body mass, bounced back several metres, but even mighty Horus could not shrug off such a blow, and he was instead forced back, his armoured feet stumbling for purchase on the ruined ground.

The battles between the others were going about as well, with Natalie having stabbed the Mandrake in the leg with one of her daggers, but having taken a hit from one of its poisoned weapons in the exchange. Her whole body was on fire, the poison sapping her ability to control her own form, but with typical Dark Eldar inefficiency the toxin was designed to cause pain more than incapacitation. The Mandrake was clearly losing sensation in its leg and thus slowing down considerably. This let Natalie take a quick glance over at the battle between the Farseer and the Inquisitor.

The sight was one lost upon Natalie, for somewhere along the line the two of them had closed to close quarters and engaged in a vicious brawl that left the smoking remains of weapons scattered about them. A shattered shuriken pistol lay next to a broken laspistol, while an empty inferno pistol sat next to a molten wraith spear. With no other weapons, the two of them resorted to going hand to hand, a fight where the Farseer had better dexterity and experience, but the Inquisitor curiously had far greater strength. The result was a great deal of clothing and armour ripped apart.

The fact that the two of them had wandered into the spray from a ruptured fire hydrant merely indicated that whatever author of fate was in charge of this scenario was as juvenile as he was twisted.

It was at that moment that Spike and his cronies decided to leap into the fight with Bella and the Farseer.

Natalie took all of this in with a single glance before returning her attention to the Mandrake. The cowardly xeno could see the situation turning against it and was clearly trying to make a retreat, but powerful poisons flowing through its blood had already taken its strength from it, and with a single swipe from her phase sword Natalie removed the crown of its skull from its head.

The Dark Eldar blinked a few times before dissolving to mist and leaving a burly, brutish looking young man wearing a pirate costume lying on the ground in its place.

As the Farseer and the Inquisitor struggled with the vampires, Natalie tried to make for them before the Inquisitor decided the battle for her. The Inquisitor turned her ring hand down so that it pointed into the puddle on the ground from the breached hydrant and then she activated her digital weapon. A ball of brilliant plasma arced down into the ground, flash vaporizing the puddle, the concrete, and some of the water in the sewer beneath in a blast that killed her instantly and flash scalded the Farseer, causing fatal burns. Several of the vampires struggling with them took too much heat for their undead bodies to stand and spontaneously combusted, leaving behind little more than fine ash.

Thrown back by the blast, Spike saw the still standing Imperial assassin and the duelling demigods and decided that he had done his bit in shutting up the witchy bitch and hastily beat a retreat, accompanied by the only one of his flunkies still alive.

It was at that time that the poison finally overwhelmed Natalie's self control and she fell to the ground screaming as the chemicals already in her blood stream began to rip her apart.

Covered in wounds and his armour practically falling off him, Sanguinius glanced up at Horus and said, "This ends now."

"It does brother, it does. You may have done me more hurt than last time, but you are surely the worse off and you are alone," Horus said.

"That I am brother; that I am. I am the last one affected by the spell, and do you know what that means?" Sanguinius asked.

Horus looked at him curiously.

"It means that when I die the spell is over _and you vanish_," Sanguinius spat before reversing his grip on his sword and plunging it into his own chest.

"_What? NO!_" Horus cried out before stumbling, the magic that had created him already starting to come undone.

Smiling, blood on his lips as he sank to his knees, Sanguinius grinned and said, "We were only ever fleeting things brother, two ends of a whole. And unlike you, I would rather die than let you continue for eternity."

Sanguinius then keeled over, fading to mist, his sacrifice complete. Horus' bellow of rage faded away as he crumbled away to nothing, leaving behind only a set of plastic razor claws.


	16. Aftermath

**Chapter Fifteen: Aftermath**

The group sat in the library _very _quietly, no one wanting to really say anything about what had happened the night before, especially now that they knew what the extent of the damage was. Not the full extent though, that was something still being counted. So far the full toll looked like several million dollars in property damage from the burning and the looting, along with dozens, possibly hundreds dead. While the usual blind eye the population of Sunnydale turned towards such things was still in affect, the fact was that this was quite simply an event that could _not _be ignored, especially by the outside world. While the mayor had managed to talk the state and federal government from sweeping in with the National Guard and declaring martial law, the situation was still grim and the casualty count still rising.

It was also awkward and uncomfortable for the Scoobies as there was the unasked questions between them all of what had been left behind by the beings that had occupied their body. They could see it in the little things in each other. Willow had suddenly developed poise and grace of the sort that indicated that she was innately aware of everything she did down to the minutest detail, in stark contrast to her bubbly, borderline-klutzy personality. Buffy on the other hand had buried her nose in one of Giles' grimoires, a complete turn around from her previous behaviour.

And then there was Xander, who alternated between looking like he had the sort of cool, calm, collected sort of pride and arrogance that said that he felt like he owned the planet and looking like he just realized that he was acting that way and suddenly felt self-conscious and annoyed about it.

Then of course there was the layer of guilt and horror liberally spackled on top of everything else. Aside from just the local damage, there were the memories of the others to contend with, and the fact that all three of them were killers at the core. Killers from a universe that made life on the Hellmouth look pleasant, in fact downright cheerful and optimistic.

Willow was the first one to break the silence when she asked, "How long for you guys? Natalie, that is to say the assassin woman, was about sixty and had been training from birth."

Buffy looked up morosely from the book laid out in front of her and said, "Bella was a _hundred and forty_ and she had been working for the Inquisition since she was twenty."

Both of them looked at Xander, who sighed and said, "There are a _lot _of memories in there, but… somewhere between _two hundred and a thousand years_ of near continuous combat. Sanguinius himself forgot more about interstellar warfare than anyone on this planet actually knows. And now I have most of the big details stuck in my head. It's… it's…"

Buffy made a disgusted face and said, "I know what you mean. Bella… Bella probably personally tortured to death more people than I've staked vampires."

"Natalie killed dozens… hundreds of people and then assumed their identities, inside and out, just so she could get close to other people and kill _them_. One time she poisoned a mother just so that she could approach a three year old child prophesized to lead an uprising. It… it…" Willow looked close to breaking down in tears.

Giles had just watched in appalled silence as the teens under his care began to talk, but finally he said, "Good lord, who were these monsters?"

Xander shook his head and said, "Giles, that's the worst part. For all the horrible things they did, I don't think anyone of us can truly _hate _the people whose memories we share. Sanguinius was a soldier, a warrior, a leader of men, and while he killed millions… billions even… in his campaigns, it was to liberate and unify the galaxy to protect it from the horrors that would prey upon them."

Buffy nodded and said, "Bella… Bella did horrible, _horrible _things, but she did it because there were _worse _things out there that she had to stop, no matter the cost. I want to say that there should have been a better way; that she should have upheld higher ideals, but in her culture Bella _was _considered an idealist, and for all the people she murdered or tortured or had executed, she probably saved entire planets from being plunged into a hell dimension or enslaved and butchered by evil aliens. It's hard to hate someone for that."

"I… I… I almost _pity _Natalie more than anything. She never had a chance to be human enough to decide. She was brainwashed since birth into being the perfect, utterly loyal killing machine. She never thought about what she did… she just did it. Killing people to her was the same as staking vampires for us and…" Willow couldn't finish the sentence as she immediately made a rush for the doors of the library but failed to make it as she violently became sick.

The point hit hard amongst all of them. They had seen through the eyes of monsters, people who did terrible things that offended every aspect of their morality, and yet they could not fault them for their actions. It was depressing to think about. While none of them would condone acting all cuddly with the next vampire or apocalypse demon they met, there was a sudden moral dissonance. It might be necessary to kill a man eating tiger, but once you saw through its eyes and felt the hunger in its belly, could you really fault it for its actions?

Suddenly the majority of the Slayer's job description felt less like fighting the forces of evil and more like animal control, with all of the depressing implications _that _conjured up. Stabbing things that looked human was hard enough as it was already, not being able to despise them was even worse. They were monsters, but they had no real _choice _to be monsters. True, some were worse than others and could be categorized as evil…

And yet when you had the memories of people who did worse and yet could not call evil, what then? Perhaps motivation was the key, or enjoyment of the activities, but even then all three of those people had often taken pride in their work. It was… it was… hard. Hard to sort it all out.

While everyone else tried to help Willow, Xander found himself standing back, a melancholy look on his face. It wasn't that he _didn't _want to help; it was just that he had something else that he had to deal with, something that would put an uncomfortable distance between him and all of his friends. Because while he had some of the most abstract memories of committing atrocities as a military commander, he had a few deeply personal ones.

Like the final fight against Horus. The _original _Horus, and the ghastly way he had slain Sanguinius. And what had happened to Sanguinius' sons, the Blood Angels afterward. And how that was in _him_ too now. He had it there within him, that lurking psychic scar that opened him up to power beyond understanding. Just behind his eyes the Black Rage lurked, and if he ever succumbed to it, he could probably tear apart Buffy in his frenzy. He did not have the already super human strength of a Space Marine, but then again none of the Blood Angels had been touched so strongly by Sanguinius' spirit either.

Of course, far worse for Xander than the Black Rage was the Red Thirst; the animalistic desire to not just kill but to _feed_, to rip apart the foe and let their hot blood trickle across the tongue and down the throat. It was a sickness, one that Xander would struggle with for the rest of his life, and considering that of the group he probably hated vampires the most, the fact that he now suffered from their affliction was so bitterly ironic.

Xander could already feel his gorge starting to rise, his anger building at seeing his friend hurt, and then _that _fact pissed him off. He knew that he could bring a lot to the whole saving the world business, but he would trade it all to be the happy-go-lucky guy in the group who knew how to make his friend Willow smile, not the dark, broody guy with the superpowers and the arrogance to match. Angel already had those bases covered.

Xander suddenly felt sorry for the poor bastard, which annoyed him even more. He had to get away before he hurt someone. The fact that he was mad enough that he felt he needed to leave angered him as well, and he had to exit in an absolutely foul mood, his face dark and stormy.

As he left the library, thoughts of ripping off the limbs of the one who had done this to him and his friends, he soon found that _everything _about him was some sort of annoyance that made him want to lash out. The noises of the school, the bleating of the sheep called his peers; it all disgusted him and made him want to lash out. Only the knowledge that if he let his anger boil over that he would Hulk out and never return to Bruce Banner kept him from giving in to the impulses that screamed at him to make them all shut up.

Then, amongst the prattling of gossip amongst those so shameless as to not have been humbled by the disaster last night, he heard something that stabbed him in the gut and made him pause.

"Did you hear? One of those drugged up freaks last night cut off her _face_," one of the Cordettes said in disgust and horror.

"Looks like poor Cordy won't be Homecoming Queen _this _year," Harmony snickered.

Had she been paying attention to him, Harmony would have seen Xander's head swivel like a tank's turret towards her before locking on with utterly murderous intent. Within seconds those who had a feeling for danger, which was a good chunk of the school considering the sort of subconscious survival instincts required to last long in Sunnydale, had vacated the area.

For the briefest of moments Xander could picture it in his mind's eye, the stupid bottle blonde bitch hurled through the nearest window, the glass shattering into razor sharp shards that cut and lacerated her, robbing her of her shallow beauty, letting her know that it wasn't a god damn joke to laugh at other people's pain like that.

But down that path lay the Dark Side.

For just the briefest of moments Xander's anger cracked at the absurdity of that statement and how nerdy he was to think of that, which was just enough to turn his head away from the shallow bitch. And once he was no longer looking at her he had nothing to focus his anger upon and it dissipated a little, still there, but not focused into a laser fine point.

Xander walked away. He just walked away. It wasn't worth it. I just _wasn't worth _it.

Then Snyder showed up. The troll was about to open his mouth when he discovered Xander making eye contact with him and abruptly forgot what he was going to say. For a brief moment they stared at one another before the little weasel said, "Right then, I think you got the message," before he scurried away to find someone less likely to beat him to death with his own arm to torment.

Xander left the school and immediately began to run, just to exert himself. He had been surprisingly fit since shortly after he had joined with Buffy in fighting the undead, but now he had the lingering power of what amounted to a demigod running through him, and he wanted to burn it all up. He ran, and he ran fast; overtaking cars in residential zones fast.

At first he ran without conscious thought, simply running for the sake of feeling the burn in his lungs and muscles and the air whipping across his skin, but soon he realized that his subconscious was leading him towards the hospital. Cordelia was a friend, an odd sort of friend, but still a friend, and she was hurt.

Slowing down as he reached the hospital, Xander tried to figure out what to do. He couldn't really help, just stare and gawk, but… but he had to see her. He would figure out the rest from there.

The hospital was overcrowded, and the staff overworked with all the injuries inflicted last night. The already overworked staff were having a rough time of it and all Xander had to do was ask for the room number for Cordelia Chase and it was given, no questions asked. There was no time to ask questions.

When Xander found her, Cordelia was lying unconscious in her bed, tucked in tight and hooked up to a variety of monitoring devices. Her entire face except for about her eyes, nose, and mouth, were wrapped in thick bandages, stained yellow with medicine and leaking fluid.

_Brother Castor stared up at him, a grim smile on what was left of his face after he had caught an ill fortuned round from an Ork gun with his plasma gun. Despite the fact that his hands were missing, he was blind, and his head was nearly reduced to a skull, he still exuded an aura of good cheer._

"_We got them my lord."_

Xander blinked and tried to shut out the ghastly memory. Cordelia's pain was just beginning as the skin grafts and surgery would soon begin. Sanguinius had seen thousands of his brothers maimed in every possible way over the centuries, and he, and now Xander, knew all the things a man had to go through to be returned to health after something like that.

But he also knew that there was a species out there that had a tendency towards the sort of behaviours that would so horrifically mutilate a beautiful young woman. Willow had fought one last night. The Dark Eldar. The creature that had worn Larry like a suit.

Xander knew what he could do for Cordelia.

Leaving the hospital, he ran back to the school, although at a more sedate pace this time as he carefully thought about what he was going to do when he arrived. He was going to make sure Larry's face never haunted Cordelia again.

Stalking into the school, Xander hunted through the halls seeking the jock football player, until finally he found the young man. Lightning quick, he shot his arm out and grabbed Larry by the neck and hauled him off his feet with supernatural strength granted by unnatural rage. Larry looked down into Xander's eyes from his position nearly touching the ceiling.

…_break his back over your knee and hurl his carcass off the Eternity Gate into the howling hordes to let them know what pitiful creatures they truly are and…_

Xander fought back the memories of Sanguinius and instead said, "I know what happened last night Larry, even if you might not want to remember. I know that it wasn't your fault, which is why you're still alive. But it used your face, so your face isn't welcome here anymore. So convince your parents, however you need to, that it isn't 'safe' to live in Sunnydale anymore. Got me?"

Larry nodded once.

Xander put the football player down ever so gently before giving him an exhausted look that said Xander did not have the patience to look at Larry any longer, and the suddenly timid looking boy scampered away in fright.

Xander then found the nearest chair to sit down in, and which point he practically collapsed from mental and physical exhaustion. Despite looking effortless at the time, lifting up Larry had taken a lot out of him. Seeing Cordelia like that had taken a lot out of him. Every minute of his life since last night had taken a lot out of him.

This was going to take some work.

* * *

The giant's eyes opened with a snap, bright yellow light burning off them with feral power. Grumbling slightly, he turned to his companions and said, "Come Freki, come Geri, my brother has shown me the path to the Tree of Life."


	17. Further Aftermath

**Chapter Sixteen: Further Aftermath**

Buffy noted Xander leave after Willow had her little break down, but said nothing. While she and Giles helped Willow, Buffy's brain quietly whirred away, putting together little pieces of information. It was actually scaring her the way things were working. The memories from Bella were a bit muddled and faded, but she could still grasp them, and some rose unbidden, her subconscious grasping at them for the tools to deal with a situation. And the old bitch had a huge number of mental tools to play with.

Already they had given Buffy enough information to fear for her sanity. She could easily develop multiple personality disorder if this kept up. There was her somewhat ditzy, valley girl persona, finely honed in the bitch-fests of Southern California high schools but then severely warped by the impact of having to shoulder the burden of being the Slayer. Then there was the Slayer itself, a wild, impulsive thing that liked to smash things. And now there was the Inquisitor, a cold, hard, machine-like persona designed to ferret out secrets and weaknesses. The mixture was unstable, especially due to her resistance to fully embracing the Slayer and now the Inquisitor.

She feared the monsters in her, but the Inquisitor was now telling her that if she did not embrace these facets of her personality she would break. The Slayer was part of her and if she did not control it, it would run wild on her. In fact, it often did because she did not have the mental strength to truly control it. How often had she run off without any idea what she was getting into only for it to bite her, sometimes literally, in the ass?

She needed to get her act together, not just for herself or the sake of the world, but for her friends. Willow had a head full of memories of an Imperial Assassin, creatures who could not exactly be described of as human and who did things that a young, mostly innocent girl really should not have to think about. Xander… Xander had the memories of a _demigod _stuck in his, along with who knew what else. They all needed to learn to deal with these memories, or they would all suffer because of them.

The Inquisitor part of her, ever devious, pointed out to the valley girl that even if they came from different cultures with different styles, they both had a refined taste in fashion, so there was at least some common ground there.

Having to admit that despite being an old lady and playing by slightly different rules, Inquisitor Bella did know how to put together a good outfit. She then started shuffling through the memories looking for anything to help Willow out. Somewhere in there she found the knowledge that Bella had on the Temple Assassins.

She then wished she had checked earlier because it was all so simple.

Taking Willow in a hug, Buffy asked, "Willow, who are you?"

Willow blinked a few times before sobbing out, "I don't know!"

"Does the assassin know?" Buffy asked.

"What?" Willow replied, confused by the question.

"The memories from the assassin. What do they say about who you are?" Buffy said.

Willow paused for a moment before she said, "They… they… they say that I am me. I…"

"You were possessed by a Callidus assassin, correct? She could assume new personalities so completely that even psychics had a hard time telling her from fakes, right? She would say things, do things to further the mission that might be completely opposite to her personality, and yet she remained true to herself and her mission, right? So _use _that, use that training, that undeniable sense of personality to help you. You are Willow, you are not an assassin; do you hear me?" Buffy said.

Nodding, Willow said a little more firmly, "I think so."

"Alright, let's go help you clean up there," Buffy said, helping up her friend. She then added on, "Maybe you can help the rest of us too. I know Xander could probably use some help with that too. He's got the most memories to deal with you know."

Nodding, Willow said a bit more happily, "Yeah… yeah, I could really help him out."

Giles looked concerned as Buffy led Willow away to the nearest washroom, but he didn't say anything at the moment, instead giving Buffy a silent Watcher glance that said that he would talk to her later.

* * *

The First Evil was _pissed_ in a way that was hard to describe in mortal terms. That little spell that had gone off last night had tapped into the Hellmouth to draw much of its power and it had been a huge power hog. While not enough to actually destabilize the Hellmouth that was because the _inhabitants_ had been drained by the spell. Out of the thousands of Turok-Han within the Hellmouth, _two _were left.

_Two!_

Worse yet, in the balance of Good and Evil, that little episode had not significantly changed the scales, and in fact may have tipped it a little towards Evil, meaning that the First was probably going to be even more limited than before.

It would find who had done this. Oh, it would find them and make them _pay…_

* * *

Mayor Richard Wilkins III was _pissed_ in a way that was hard to tell behind his eternally smiling façade. He would never show it or rant or rave or, horrors forbid, _swear_, but all of his subordinates were tip-toeing around him for fear of his eerily pleasant yet still deadly wrath.

What had happened last night, it threatened everything he had worked for, and made him look bad both to his constituents and to the various demons he had contracts with. This was something that could not be tolerated. Oh no, it could not be tolerated at all.

His resources already told him that the centre of the ruckus last night had been that two-bit chaos mage Ethan Rayne, but the man had neither the power nor the lack of self-preservation instincts to do something so destructive. Someone had interfered with his spell. Someone powerful and skilled at hiding their tracks, as all the auguries and divinations that had been cast so far said that Ethan Rayne was the only one involved in the spell.

That meant that they were looking for a chaos mage or mages, because only one of them would be crazy enough to pull a stunt like that, of immense power and skill to not only interfere with the ritual but cover their tracks _that _effectively afterward. Unfortunately the Mayor thought that he already knew all of the chaos mages with that much power and had made deals, unbreakable deals at that, with them to stay out of his sandbox. This meant that he was dealing with a chaos mage who had somehow managed to rise to power _without _drawing the sort of attention that went along with being a super powered lunatic.

The Mayor was looking for a contradiction, a paradox. _Perfect_. Just _perfect_. That was what he really needed right now, to have something that should not exist running about causing him trouble while he was trying to do damage control on the town and with his contacts.

Sighing, he pulled out his memo pad and began figuring out what he would need to do today. Another press conference, reassuring the governor that everything was under control, acquiring the Tome of Tal'nach'elb, and reviewing his list of virgin sacrifices. Yeah, that should do for the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

Buffy watched wide-eyed as Xander lifted the terrified Larry into the air and could not help but think of how just a few days ago she had been the one keeping the bully off Xander's back. After the nearly petrified football player ran scurrying off to get the hell out of town, Xander glanced about to see if anyone had seen him before a look of utter self loathing washed over him.

Stuck to the shadows with decades of experience on how not to be seen while trailing someone, Buffy tried to think of something to say to Xander. Part of her wanted to berate him for being stupid, but another part knew that it wasn't his fault he had the memories stuck in his head, had the power stuck in his body.

That however left her wondering that if he could have some of the supernatural power left over from having Sanguinius stuck in him, what else might be left in them? Skills and knowledge was one thing, but what about physical things? Bella wouldn't really add much to Buffy physically, but for her friends who had their bodies inhabited by super humans, what could they now do?

It was something worth exploring, although the majority of Buffy rebelled at the thought of using her friends like mere weapons, although the Inquisitor part pointed out that a lot of her objection was probably pure ego talking, seeing as there was a piece of her that would feel threatened at the loss of her 'special' status as Slayer if her friends became super powered. That of course was silly, seeing as how if all three of them were on equal terms they would all be safer and there was less chance of them dying at a critical time and the world ending.

Buffy frowned sourly at the thought before squashing it. She had bigger fish to fry. So she followed quietly behind Xander until he collapsed in a chair from exhaustion, at which point she moved up to talk to him.

Looking up, Xander's face fell and he looked down ashamed to say, "You saw that, didn't you?"

Buffy considered for a moment before she said, "Yes. I suppose all I have to ask is why?"

Still staring at the floor, Xander fidgeted for a moment before he said, "Because I was angry at Larry for what the _thing _wearing him last night did. He hurt Cordelia, he flayed off her _face!_ When Cordy recovers she's not going to want to see him ever again, so I made sure she never would. I wanted to hurt Larry so bad, and it took every fibre of me to not tie him into a pretzel and then go on a rampage. Oh God Buffy, I'm so scared right now."

Xander then hugged himself tightly and shuddered as if he had stepped out into a Siberian blizzard in one of his regular Hawaiian shirts.

"Listen Xander, you're not alone. Willow and I, we went through the same thing, and while I'm sure you got the worst of it, we can help you… especially Willow. She probably now knows the most of any one of us about having a firm grasp on her identity and controlling her emotions. We can all help each other out here."

Finally looking up, Xander let a smile cross his face and he said, "Look at me here, being given the Xander-speech about how I have friends by Buffy. Last night really did a number on us, didn't it?"

Buffy's first instinct was to be insulted, but that calm, cool part of her that had been forcibly inserted last night held her back and let her now that her friend was hurting and looking for anything humorous to soothe his wounded mind. And in retrospect it _was _grimly ironic.

Nodding, Buffy smiled and said, "You're right, and let me tell you, it's a pain in the ass, so can we work on making you more Xander-y so we can go back to our normal roles? Being the one pouting is so much more fun than being the one trying to do the cheering up."

Laughing now, Xander said, "Great! Now I think you're doing my job better than I am!"

"Come on, we need to get some donuts and ice cream and watch some stupid comedy movies," Buffy offered.

"No chick flicks," Xander warned with dark seriousness before his face cracked into a lopsided grin and he said, "Okay, maybe _one _chick flick if I get to choose a guy comedy."

"I think we use that as a point of negotiation. Come on, let's go get Willow and Giles," Buffy said.

Rising unsteadily on still exhausted legs, Xander posed heroically and said, "To the library!"

* * *

Inquisitor Bella lay stripped and naked, a restraining collar about her neck as she lay in front of a council of her peers, who all stared down at her. She gritted her teeth against the pain of the past several weeks of poking and prodding and psychic contact as they had determined whether or not she had been tainted by her experience. Finally she would hear the decision that had been made. While she showed no fear of her fellows, Bella's heart was clutched with terror. After all, _she _had been the one to call for this trial.

"Inquisitor Bella de Lancourt, you asked for a trial to test you for corruption after you claim to have had your soul removed from your body by foul sorceries. You have endured every test set before you with the honour and dignity befitting an Inquisitor… or the skill of a master liar. We now stand ready to deliver our judgement," Lord Inquisitor Stamos declared. "Do you have anything to say?"

"My fate is in the hands of the Emperor, I shall not protest your decision either way," Bella replied.

"Good. Then you should know that our testing shows that you _have _been affected by the foulness of Chaos sorcery," Stamos said.

Hanging her head, Bella said, "Then I await execution."

Stamos held up a hand and said, "You have been _affected_, but not _tainted_, there is a difference. Your story of being drawn against your will into the body of another has been confirmed by a Callidus Assassin who called for an emergency mission abort with a similar tale… and by a request to spare you from the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels."

Tears of joy began to well up in Bella's eyes as she heard that. "Then my story…"

"It would seem that you are one of the most blessed people in all of His Imperial Majesty's Imperium, if you truly did see Lord Sanguinius," Stamos said, the barest hint of a smile creasing his ancient and deadly serious face.

"I expect that the Blood Angels will wish to speak with me then," Bella asked.

"They do indeed. From this point onward all rights and privileges as an Inquisitor have been restored to you. Guards, please release the lady and give her something to restore some of her dignity," Lord Stamos ordered and a pair of Inquisitorial storm troopers detached themselves from the shadows and went to release Lady Bella.

As she had her restraints removed and a sheet to cover herself, Bella let the hard look of an Inquisitor return to her eyes and she said, "I hope I will not sound presumptuous if I request the chance to get to the bottom of this, especially if it at all portends the return of Lord Sanguinius, or Emperor protect, the Archenemy Horus. I only wish I could have seen the end of their fight."

"I would expect nothing less from you, and you will receive all the support we can muster. This event must not go unanswered. We will find this world and learn what importance it holds," Lord Stamos said with absolute certainty.

Bella nodded. The Inquisition was going to find Sunnydale.


	18. Kids

**Chapter Seventeen: Kids**

The bizarre skull monstrosity continued to leer down at SG-1 until the sun dimmed for a moment, causing all to look up and see a vast set of leathery wings attached to a familiar frame. Banking tightly, Justice quickly spiralled in to land next to the giant creature, her armour loosened from before to allow for her wings, revealing some more bestial features, most notably the cloven feet that really completed the picture of a demonic figure from mythology.

Frowning, Justice said to the creature in a stern voice, "Kali! What are you doing here?"

The creature frowned and said, "I wanna see momma's work."

"Do you have any idea what your parents will say when they find you here? Do you have any idea how much trouble you'll be in? Do you have any idea how much trouble _I'll _be in if I don't bring you back immediately?" Justice reprimanded.

Looking simultaneously ashamed and defiant, the creature called Kali said, "If you don't tell them, they won't know to get mad."

"They'll find out young lady! I'm sure that they already know that you're gone, and you can't hide from them, they're far too perceptive for that," Justice said.

"But… but…" Kali said, starting to pout.

"It's no use trying to talk me out of it. Now stay here while I contact your parents!" Justice ordered, causing the giant monster to sit down and sulk.

Turning to SG-1, Justice said, "Sorry about that, little Kali here should be at home but she seems to be a bit too interested in what we're doing here."

"Which is what exactly?" Daniel asked in an appalled tone.

Grinning with a shark smile, Justice said, "We're building an Evangelion!"

There was a brief pause before Daniel said, "_That's _what Prometheus negotiated so hard to be declared legal?"

Glancing over at the pit and the line of people being decapitated and regenerating, Justice shrugged and said, "We'll each build them differently, and that's not the final product. The final product is a fifty metre tall combat cyborg capable of shrugging off nuclear bombardments. We'll be using it as a weapon against the Ori."

There was a long silence before Mitchell held up a hand and said, "Daniel, I know you want to say it, but just don't, okay?"

"You mean that little sentence that goes something along the lines of oh, 'I told-'" Daniel began.

"I said don't say it!" Mitchell hissed.

"You funny," Kali commented.

"Also, could we get a little info on the giant pile of skulls with the mind of a child, and maybe the whole 'Ninth Circle of Hell' motif you have going?" Mitchell asked.

Snorting, Justice replied, "The Ninth Circle in Dante's Inferno was a very cold place, the blasted ruin here has more in common with Sixth or Seventh Circle."

Daniel raised an eyebrow at this knowledge of Earth mythology before he pointed out, "That didn't exactly answer our question."

Waving it off, Justice said, "Yeah, yeah. Alright. Introductions first. Kali, this is SG-1; SG-1, Kali. Named after the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, she is one of the children of the gods. And when I say child, I do mean it literally as she is only about the equivalent of a three year old in terms of development."

"Okay. And the landscape redecoration?" Mitchell asked.

"Blame the glassed ground on the Ori; they were the ones who decided to bombard us. As for the sky and the fact that you can no longer plot this world in real space, well, that's our little secret," Justice said with a false innocent smile.

"Justice made this place a Daemonworld!" Kali announced.

Holding the bridge of her nose in exasperation, Justice said, "Kali, we've been trying to avoid using the D Word around here because it scares the locals."

Pointing to the giant horror and then to Justice, Mitchell said, "Between her and the wings, I don't think you could hide _that _fact much longer."

Looking up, Justice said, "Well, we could kill you all to keep it at secret, now couldn't we?"

Justice immediately had four P-90s trained at her head, but she gave them all a dirty look and asked, "Do _any _of you honestly think that those will slow either one of us down?"

As always, Teal'c was the King of One-Liners. "No, but they will almost certainly sting."

Justice held out for a good three seconds before bursting out into gales of laughter, collapsing to the ground, clutching her side.

"I like his humour," a soft, feminine voice said behind SG-1. Whirling about to train their guns on this new threat, they instead discovered two naked young women, one deathly pale with blue hair, the other a red head of similar features to Justice, only less demonic.

Somehow the fact that they _looked _more human did not reassure SG-1.

Two things immediately happened. The first was that Justice snapped to her feet and gave a crisp salute. The other was that Kali cried out, "Momma! Mama!"

"KALI!" The red headed girl roared, causing the demon to flinch and SG-1 to take a step back. "Do you have any idea how worried you made us when you ran off like that? You're not supposed to leave the Palace without an escort, but to come here of all places? You are _grounded _for the next decade!"

The pale woman turned to SG-1 and said calmly, "She's being literal so you know."

"But!" Kali began.

"No 'buts' from you missy, I-" It was at this moment that several glowing white figures materialized out of thin air. The red head turned to them and cried out, "_FU-_dge! Reigle, you deal with the locals, I'm not done chewing out our daughter."

"Yes Asukhon," the pale girl said before turning to the ascended beings and nearly falling apart from the rapid decay that overtook her that resulted in what appeared to be a corpse that had died of plague, smallpox, Ebola, and cancer simultaneously before being buried in rotting garbage for several days and yet was somehow still animate. Raising a placating hand, Reigle said, "We apologize for the intrusion, we were just here to get our daughter back. She is but a child and does not understand the laws she broke by coming here."

The leader of the Ancients looked amongst them and said, "We can see that, and note that you are taking measures to correct the problem, so we are willing to 'let this one slide', but you are pushing the boundaries of our agreement."

"We can assure you that our presence here is in no way intended to undermine your authority in this galaxy, and we will not influence any of the activities done by our agents that could be construed as a direct intervention, in contravention of your laws of non-interference. Perhaps a small token concession on our part to show our sincerity?" Reigle suggested while Asukhon continued to yell at Kali in the background.

Frowning, the leader of the Ancients replied, "Perhaps." Glancing at the Evangelion pit being constructed, he said, "That can't leave this planet."

Pausing in her rant, Asukhon whirled about and assumed her full daemon war god persona and shouted out, "_WHAT? _How is that _fair?_ Reigle is here too and I don't see you punishing her."

Reigle turned to Asukhon and said in an annoyed tone, "Are you _trying _to undermine _both _our positions?"

"I'm just saying…" Asukhon growled out.

Sighing, the Ancient just said, "Alright, how's about no using Evangelions on non-Daemonworlds?"

Pausing for a moment, Asukhon said, "That actually helps me… sort of."

Scowling, Reigle said, "We will have to discuss this with the others first, but something along those lines will probably be accepted."

Turning back to Kali, Asukhon said, "See what trouble you got your mothers into? Not only that, but we missed watching Sunnydale get blown up because we were out looking for you."

Pouting, Kali said pathetically, "I'm sorry."

"We are leaving now, but we will be in touch," Reigle said before fading away. The assembled Ancients gave the situation a few glances before they seemed satisfied and similarly disappeared.

Taking one of Kali's enormous fingers in her own hand, which somehow managed to dwarf the giant skeletal structure, Asukhon said, "Come along Kali. Also, thank you Justice for calling me."

Then they too faded away.

"What the _hell _was that?" Mitchell asked once the need to run screaming towards the horizon subsided.

Unclenching from her pose in salute, Justice said, "Those were the gods, _here!_ What an honour! What a horror! Oh, you are lucky mortals that they did not show you their fully majesty! To see such a thing would drive a lowly daemon like me to my knees in awe and drive you all mad with the splendour!"

"Those two were the gods you worship?" Daniel asked sceptically. He then found a rather large battle-axe resting against his throat where a moment before it had not been there.

"You are lucky I am under orders not to kill you, for I would pluck out your tongue for such insolence any other time. _Yes_, those were two of our four gods, Asukhon and Reigle. I am a servant of Asukhon, an extension of her will given sentience and individuality, so any insults directed at her are also directed at _me_," Justice told him.

"Ah," Daniel replied nervously as the axe was drawn away from his neck, the razor sharp blade not leaving so much as a nick on him despite the tingling close proximity it had been with regards to his major arteries.

Seething, Justice pointed across the hill and said, "Just… just go for now. Prometheus will undoubtedly fill you in more next time you meet, but right now I need to kill something I'm so mad, so I suggest you not be near by when I start working out my frustrations."

"Taking the hint," Mitchell said before getting his team the hell out of dodge. Or was it dodging out of hell?

* * *

Far, far away in cosmic terms, in a large, airy apartment that got lots of sunlight, two _very _different mothers from the two goddesses were having a sit down chat with their daughter.

"So Vivio, the two of us are going to have to go away for a while because of our jobs, and you can't come along because it's too dangerous," Nanoha Takamachi explained to her adoptive daughter.

"We'll only be gone for a few weeks at most though," Fate Harlaown, her god mother, added on.

"So you will be good while staying over with your grandparents, right Vivio?" Nanoha said. "Your Uncle Chrono will be sure to stop by too."

Vivio looked like she was trying not to cry, but looking between the faces of her two mothers she quickly burst into tears and buried her face in Fate's chest to hide them. The both of them sighed as they wrapped the girl up in a hug, and both felt awful for lying about just how dangerous the mission was. The fact was that the Hayate-Fate-Nanoha circle normally terrified the TSAB leadership because of the magical and political power they wielded, so to have them assembled again less than a year after the Scaglietti Incident showed just how scared they were of the threat from Chaotic Space.

Of course, they also knew that so long as they had something to come home to, nothing would keep them from getting back to Mid-childa, not even a hole torn in the multiverse.

The TSAB was sending its best agents into the breach.


	19. Conference

**Chapter Eighteen: Conference**

The Time Space Administration Bureau's First Military Expeditionary Force had been assembled in only about two weeks since the shockwave had washed over their territory, although since the command crew was basically just Lost Property Riot Force 6 reconstituted with the purpose of investigating the probable release of Chaotic Space into the multiverse at large. Only the two most junior members, Erio and Caro, were not present as their skills these days were better suited to rebuilding than investigation and prevention.

Leading the operation was Colonel Hayate, promoted in the year since the Scaglietti Incident, with her Wolkenritter all present as her bodyguards, or more aptly for Vita and Signum enforcers, along with the Unison Devices Rein and Agito. The seven of them alone had the firepower and resources to conquer worlds if they so wished, but fortunately for the multiverse Hayate was more interested in helping others than laying waste to civilizations.

Of course the fact that she was being sent on a mission to the furthest, most dangerous part of the multiverse indicated what the higher ups thought of the ridiculous amount of raw power she had at her fingertips.

The division head of Investigations was Fate, assisted by her seconds Teana and Shari in coordinating nearly two dozen non-commissioned investigators. They would be the ones, hopefully, doing the majority of the grunt work as the searched for answers to what had happened. In addition, the archaeologist and scholar Yuuno Scrya had been added to the team to complement their raw research ability.

And then there was Captain Nanoha, leader of the combat platoon, which she had hand picked from all of the soldiers who had successfully passed through her advanced training regimen. While it was hoped that they would not be needed, Wild Space often housed outlaws and pirates, and almost nothing was known about Chaotic Space, so bringing along extra firepower was always useful. In addition, Subaru of the Disaster Planning and Humanitarian had been added in at Nanoha's request to make sure that they had some specialized ability to handle whatever disasters they might find out there.

Already they were in transit aboard the heavy frigate _Eventide_. A smaller ship than the cruisers most of them had worked on before, it had a specialized dimensional keel to aid in manoeuvring in the heavy currents in Wild Space while still being big enough to mount an Arc-en-Ceil. It and its sister ships had been designed to deal with the threat of actual military forces being built up in Wild Space, and with the Scaglietti Incident even more had been commissioned to ensure that no one like him could ever hide out there with some forgotten super weapon and not fear obliteration.

Since it was going to be a long trip, Hayate had decided until now to give the full briefing and begin the strategy session. Everyone already knew the broad details and knew the risks, but the entirety of the story had yet to be told.

Bringing up a holographic image, Hayate displayed the three dimensional map of the multiverse. Mid-Childa was a glowing point at its centre, an arbitrary distinction really, while the various territorial, allied, administrated, non-administrated and unexplored universes were spread out like glowing, colour coded stars in the void. On the part of the map labelled 'Wild Space' the tiny spheres that represented whole universes began to smear out, trailing tendrils behind them, while in the centre of Wild Space there was a vast black hole labelled 'Chaotic Space' with an ugly red marker that red 'Probable Breach Point' on the edge.

Pointing to the red marker, Hayate said, "This is our target, an unexplored universe that only has a cosmological catalogue number U7W-1T4. Two weeks ago, by our reckoning, a massive dimensional dislocation occurred there, sending shockwaves all across the multiverse. Scans though indicate that while this universe exists just outside the boundary of Wild Space and Chaotic Space, the energy for the dislocation came from beyond the Great Wall, the barrier that separates Chaotic Space from the rest of the universe."

Clearly her throat, Teana waited to be acknowledged before she asked, "What do you mean by 'our reckoning'?"

Frowning, Hayate explained, "In normal space, including interdimensional space, time is linear and aside from the effects of relativity, it all runs at the same speed. In Wild Space, and presumably more so in Chaotic Space, time is a more slippery thing and can run at many different speeds. Alternate realities form, and it is possible to move between them, or even back and forth along them. Unfortunately this causes a great deal of stress in space and time, hence why experimentation with time travel elsewhere is banned by the TSAB. There is some speculation that Chaotic Space was originally formed when a civilization experimented too heavily with time travel."

"Who could have done that?" Subaru wondered aloud for a moment.

Everyone turned to Yuuno, but he just shook his head and said, "We don't know. Some scholars think that it was Al-Hazard that created Chaotic Space and the Great Wall around it, while still others think that Al-Hazard created just the Great Wall in an attempt to contain the destructive energies within. However, there is a growing body of evidence that Al-Hazard was built by survivors from an even earlier civilization whose downfall may be related to the formation of Chaotic Space."

Fate, Yuuno, and Nanoha all shared a silent look at the mention of Al-Hazard. Nearly twelve years ago Fate's mother had nearly destroyed a vast swathe of the multiverse in her attempts to find and enter the near mythical lost civilization of Al-Hazard using the Jewel Seeds. Even worse, all of them had already picked out the point on the map that indicated where Precia Testarossa had made her fortress in the border of Wild Space where she hoped that lost civilization might still be hiding.

"So basically we're dealing with something made by people who may have been myths of myths of the _Belkans _and its breaking down," Teana summarized in a horrified tone.

"There is another option," Yuuno said. "It is also possible that there is something alive in there and they are trying to get out."

Hayate looked at him strangely before she asked, "I thought that the leading theory was that there was a raw dimensional void in there. Nothing could live in that."

"Nothing that _we _can imagine, no," Yuuno corrected. "It is possible that there are pockets of stability within the void where life could exist, and now that we actually have confirmation of something coming out of Chaotic Space that seems more likely."

"But they couldn't be intelligent. The Linker Cores in higher order life tap into the energy inherent between dimensions, and without a Linker Core, even an undeveloped one like in non-mages, true sapience is impossible," Nanoha pointed out.

"True, but again, that assumes life like ours. There are some theoretical models that show that energy could be obtained from a dimensional void, enormous amounts in fact, it would just be significantly more dangerous to draw from," Yuuno explained.

"So we are going into a barely explored, mostly patrol-less region where it is difficult to navigate to look at a malfunctioning artefact of an ancient civilization that could destroy civilization as we know it if things go wrong, and there are potential aliens waiting in the wings for us?" Teana summarized.

"Sounds like Tuesday with this group," Signum said dryly, causing everyone to look at her in shock for coming up with a line like that.

Still, not one to be outdone, Vita replied acidly, "Nah, the stakes are higher than that, this is definitely a Friday job. And if we screw up we'll have to work overtime on the weekend too."

Snickering and giggling at the humour between the Guardian Knights, the whole team had a good laugh before Hayate shook her head and said, "All right people, let's get to the planning, this mission is important."

* * *

Deep in the Palace of the Gods, so far below the surface of what used to be Tokyo-3 that it was no longer technically on Earth it was so deeply submerged in the Warp, the deities watched on as two combatants sparred for their pleasure. In all the myriad worlds open to them, precisely four beings bore the Mark of Chaos Ascendant. The first and foremost was the God Emperor Penguin, who sat in his golden armour along with his finely dressed court in attendance of this match. The second and third were the Primarchs Toji and Kensuke, of which the former was a member of the match.

The fourth mortal to bear the full blessings of the gods was the other combatant, and she had been granted such a boon not for particular valour, but to survive in this place and because of her particular qualities that gave her a great deal of potential. If all went well, she would be the trump card in the coming conflicts.

The match was quite even, although if both parties stopped holding back for fear of harming the other, or more importantly some of the frailer members of the audience, it would probably rapidly devolve into a win for Toji, simply because he had far greater experience, despite the fact that the new girl had been given a full extra four years of training in the past three months since her discovery, a boon the gods had granted by bending time to their whim.

An adamantine and bone scythe collided with a modified power fist and the air exploded into an enormous shockwave from the conflicting psychic energies emanating off of them. Already several dents had been blown in the floor, and a few of the penguins were looking decidedly ruffled. Finally deciding that enough was enough, Tzintchi waved the contestants off and said, "That is enough. I can see that neither one of you wants to lose, but we don't want you both to cut loose fully. I my eyes both of you have won this match. Toji, by demonstrating your superior martial skills as always. Ali, by demonstrating just how much you have learned."

Ceasing, the two of them bowed and said, "Thank you my lord."

"You've grown so much since we've found you, Little Ali," Mislaato said proudly, while wiping away a maternal tear made of concentrated heroin.

"I would not have survived without your help, it is the least I could do to train as hard as I could for you," Ali replied happily while brushing a lock of long, blonde hair made almost white pale by the Warp energies coursing through her veins. "You have given me so much, and so many people have helped me along my path."

"Yes and your next assignment will be to travel out with Toji to Bloodhaven, the world Asukhon has converted into a Daemonworld," Tzintchi explained.

Perking up, the four metre tall armour clad giant asked, "So finally you are letting me out there on a military campaign."

Nodding, Asukhon said, "Of sorts. Frankly in terms of a ground campaign most of the enemies in that universe are either so pathetic or so small that the forces Reigle has already gathered would be enough to overwhelm them if not for space superiority."

"But Bloodhaven is also the first place any interested parties from the far part of the multiverse where interdimensional travel is not restricted to Haruhi's domain or a Hellmouth world would go, which means that Ali should meet them," Tzintchi explained.

Toji frowned for a moment before he asked, "Are you…"

Shaking his head, Tzintchi said, "This is most emphatically _not _a babysitting mission. Your overall goal will be to coordinate the ground campaigns such that enemy space superiority is _not _a factor. This will be good practice for you in anticipation of when we turn our attentions to the Necrontyr."

"With this new travel, why do we not simply find a universe far from them and let them have this one? Not that I advocate running away per se, I just want to know your reasoning with this," Toji asked.

"Because of the other Chaos Gods," Reigle said quietly.

Rolling her eyes, Asukhon said, "Well _that _was informative."

Shaking his head, Tzintchi said, "Quiet you two. Alright, the long answer is that there exist alternate time lines, paths to universes where the Old Gods did not perish, and they would overwhelm us as we are now. The Necrontyr Great Warding actually shields us from them, as while we can survive in it, they _can't._ So first we must build up our infrastructure and then bring down the Great Warding before we can do anything that would draw their attention directly to us."

"Which is why Mr. Schemes Within Schemes here changed the symbol list for that Ethan guy to none of _our _symbols, just to lead the Imperium and Chaos in the opposite direction from the majority of our activities _and didn't tell us_," Asukhon growled.

"You would have objected to getting them involved so early in the game," Tzintchi groused.

"Yeah, well, I think its pretty fucking _convenient _that Kali ran away to Bloodhaven just in time for that little switch to happen," Asukhon growled dangerously.

Holding up a hand, Tzintchi said, "Hey! I would never endanger one of the kids!"

"Was the emphasis on 'never' or 'endanger' there? Because Kali never actually went anywhere dangerous, she just wandered away from home," Reigle pointed out.

Tzintchi shut up at that.


	20. First Convergence

**Chapter Nineteen: First Convergence**

The mind of Tzintchi the Nine Fingered was a complicated thing, one that even the other gods had trouble working out at times. This was one of them. He had been moving his pieces about _very _carefully since the games had begun, often times failing to seize upon advantages that the others did not see because they would hinder him later. He had also subtly, and not so subtly, been moving the pieces of his peers to his own advantage.

For all of his swearing when the scoring had been added up, he had been the one moving Asukhon towards the construction of a Daemonworld. He had been intentionally goading her into coming up with something more clever than "Blood for the Blood God!" and had managed to get her to pull of something as brilliant, and as obvious as that.

Why? Because the division between the various realities was artificial and there was a barrier in space and time where the only breach point to the outside multiverse was the one where Haruhi reigned in ignorant supremacy. Someone had built a containment system for an entire branch of the multiverse.

And yet Ali's story indicated that those living out there were ignorant of who had actually built the barrier. Tzintchi needed more data. He needed to learn more about those living on the outside. So he had moved Asukhon into sending up a massive "We're here!" signal. If it came to violence, then she would be the best suited to the task while he could remain in the background and observe.

It was why he had begun the rebirth of the Tok'ra. They were born survivors who were good at keeping their ears open, and if it all went to hell in that universe, they would be the ones most likely to somehow make it out alive. And be indebted to him for saving their race. The Tok'ra were his back-up plan for data gathering.

Threads of fate were coming together as one into a complex pattern. Tzintchi could not see all of them, but he could see more than those travelling them. If he had done this right, the Ori should launch their full assault on the Milky Way right as the outsiders showed up. With Mislaato's agent having been helping to upgrade the Lucian Alliance ships, the fight would be significantly more interesting than if things had been allowed to run their course originally. Also, the Tau'ri had managed to conserve a considerable amount of resources that they might have otherwise lost in the conflict due to the Ori reprioritizing.

Then again the Ori had also decided that maybe just four motherships might be insufficient for the coming campaign.

Tzintchi watched as the pieces on the board moved, and then a new one appeared.

"Do they honestly think that a black hole is going to hurt my Daemonworld?" Asukhon asked in disgust as the Ori collapsed the star that P4X K79 had once orbited.

"No, but it might power their shiny new supergate," Mislaato pointed out.

"Ooooh! So they're finally going to give me a _real _fight! This is going to be fun," Asukhon said with glee, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.

"You may borrow my armies," Reigle stated quietly.

"Half of them are already there, but yeah, making sure the important people aren't swamped would be nice," Asukhon said casually.

"I'm deploying the Lucian Alliance's capital ships," Mislaato said.

"Hey! It's my world, you can't just barge in," Asukhon snarled.

"Technically with Toji and Ali there, something you agreed to, we all have a stake in that world. I am informing the Tau'ri and the Free Jaffa, if they don't already know, about this development," Tzintchi said while smiling.

Asukhon glared at him but shook her head and said, "I expected this when you proposed sending those two over there. Very well. Also, clever strategy, if a rather cowardly one. No matter what happens after today, you lose _nothing_."

"What can I say? That I saw this coming and waited to develop up my own forces in that universe?" Tzintchi asked.

"You could have told us," Asukhon groused.

"Oh where is the fun in that my dear?" Mislaato asked while chuckling. "We are playing against each other as much as against the locals. If Tzintchi had some advantageous knowledge in our game, why should he share it with us if he doesn't want to?"

"Because it would be a nice thing to do?" Reigle asked.

Bursting out laughing, Tzintchi said, "Alright, just for that my dears I will let you see one of the cards in my hand. I have ensured that the Warp about Asukhon's world is still relatively calm, unnaturally still in fact, even for that tame place."

"I had noticed that, I thought you were just screwing with me somehow, but I couldn't actually figure out what the _point _was so I let it slide. What are you doing?" Asukhon asked.

"If I'm right, we should get extra reinforcement right when we need it," Tzintchi said enigmatically.

Asukhon looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, before shutting it and shaking her head. Eventually she said, "Forget it, I'll just tell Toji to get ready for a planetary assault. I expect the Ori to have some sort of trick up their sleeve for this one."

Tzintchi took another look at the way the strands of fate were twisting. This was going to be _fun!_

* * *

The journey out into Wild Space had been a long, difficult one, taking a full two weeks as the _Eventide _had been forced to dodge about the various interdimensional storms that had been kicked up in the already unstable region by the dislocation. For some, this meant many long, boring, tense hours of waiting. For those with combat profiles, this meant special training missions with Captain Nanoha.

Fortunately for the combat teams, the "White Devil" did not push them _too _hard as she did not intend to exhaust or injure them before the actual mission. Unfortunately for them, Nanoha knew very intimately exactly what actions would hurt someone or leave them excessively fatigued and could push them to their very limits and not one step further.

And now they were at the target location, sitting in interdimensional space in orbit above a world that had been shoved out of normal space by unimaginable forces. The surface of the planet was massively scarred, once green and brown plains and forests reduced to ugly black craters hundreds of kilometres across. The seas had also turned blood red with some sort of pollution, and the readings on the scanners were very strange.

For one thing, while they were picking up signs of activity on the planet's surface, there were very few life signs… and whenever they tried to focus their scrying equipment on any of the life signs they did pick up, they only got white noise and static, as if something was jamming them.

There was no other option but to send someone down to the surface to try and make contact with the locals. The only question now was who to send?

Fat had considered for about half a second before glancing over at Nanoha and Fate and shrugging. They were diplomatic… enough… neither one of them had a tendency to _start _shooting anyway. Well, Fate more so, but still. The two of them should be able to handle a basic first contact scenario, and if things escalated out of control they had the best chance of getting away safely. Sending only two young women _might _not garner much respect depending upon the culture of the locals, but at least it wouldn't panic them like a larger group might.

With any luck it would be Fate making the friends and not Nanoha, seeing as how no matter what happened, that would probably involve an international incident.

Shaking her head at the thought and reassuring herself that it would be alright, Hayate ordered, "Fate, Nanoha, I want you two to teleport down to the surface and begin recon and contact with the locals. See what you can find out."

"Yes ma'am," both of them said while saluting.

Hopefully this would go peacefully.

* * *

The three battlecruisers available to Earth at the moment, the _Daedalus _being in another galaxy, dropped out of hyperspace in a triangular formation, the _Prometheus _at the centre while flanked on either side by the _Odyssey _and the _Korolev. _Dropping out around them were almost two dozen Ha'taks from the Free Jaffa Nation rallied by Teal'c for the defence of the galaxy.

Almost immediately their sensors lit up with unknown contacts, a group of ten Ha'taks who they did not recognize. Shields had already been up and weapons hot, so in less than a second the entire formation had locks on the unknowns, but almost immediately a general message was sent out by the unknowns.

"Attention forces of the Tau'ri and Jaffa, these are the ships of the Lucian Alliance, and we mean you no harm. In fact, we come to offer you aid at repelling the Ori," a somewhat glazed looking official announced.

"And how exactly did you know about the supergate?" Daniel asked.

"Lady Compassion told us that it was a mission given to her directly by the Goddess," the man said with a somewhat vacant smile. He was almost certainly on something.

"Great, fighting religious fanatics with religious fanatics," Mitchell muttered.

"Have you done anything to the supergate since arrival?" Carter asked.

"No, we only arrived shortly before you did. The Lady said that there would not be time to prevent what is coming, only to confront it," the man replied.

Almost as if on cue the supergate energized and formed a version of the regular wormhole created by a Stargate only a thousand times greater. The man said, "And so the symphony of destruction begins. We attack the moment something emerges from the event horizon."

The channel clicked dead as the Lucian Alliance ships began to move about, forming a roughly semi-spherical formation away from the other ships. There was a tense moment as nothing else happened, and then the nose of the first Ori ship poked out through the event horizon.

The rest did not make it.

As one all ten Lucian Alliance Ha'taks opened fire with all main guns on overcharge. With any other force, this would not have worked, but Lady Compassion had spent the last several months perfecting the systems and crews of these ships. Every single shot fired arrived within a tenth of a second on a spot about two metres in diameter, a tolerance tighter than the Tau'ri demanded in space combat.

The amount of energy was simply too much for the shields of the Ori mothership to take and they quite spectacularly failed. Within the ship the entire shield generator was turned to molten slag by its capacitors having their energy handling limits exceeded by an order of magnitude. Of course, it was a moot point as the remaining energy from the barrage flooded the bridge and instantly vaporized the Prior commanding the ship, as well as utterly destroying the main weapon system.

Half a second later, the next Ori ship, somehow not anticipating that their enemies would turn the gate into a shooting gallery for their ships, emerged and rammed straight into the drifting hulk of the first ship. While its shields handled the physical impact adequately, it also blinded the pilot to what was happening.

This ship took two salvos to destroy as the Ha'taks had not had time to bring their guns to maximum possible charge, with the first salvo knocking down the shields while the second completely removed the main part of the ship, leaving only the remains of the hoop-like rear drive section to drift in space in front of the gate.

The third ship exited into the debris field of the first two ships and the incoming fire from not just the Lucian Alliance but the Jaffa and Tau'ri ships as well. That many ships firing on a single target meant that the unnatural coordination of the Alliance ships was unnecessary as the last ship was simply overwhelmed and shredded by the relentless fire.

A fourth ship did not appear. Instead, the gate was quiet for a moment, a huge debris field drifting about it quietly while the defenders sat on the other side, waiting for something to come through.

It took several seconds for anything to happen, but after a short time of tense waiting the sensors on the _Prometheus _picked up dozens of fast moving and accelerating contacts heading away from the gate, hidden by the debris for the first part of their journey.

"Fighters, clever," Colonel Penderghast commented. "Scramble all 302s in the fleet and get our rail guns ready for point defence. Move us to cover the Lucian Alliance ships; they're the ones who know how to hit hard."

In short order the _Prometheus _and the _Odyssey_, followed willingly by the _Korolev_, moved to provide anti-fighter cover for the Alliance ships, while Death gliders out on CAP were already engaging the Ori fighters.

As bad as it was though, every member of SG-1 pointedly refrained from questioning whether or not the situation could get worse. It could and would in the most unexpected way if experience had anything to say about it.

* * *

In another but nearby dimension on the world dubbed Bloodhaven, a young girl of perhaps age twelve on the outside, probably younger, was sitting on a blasted outcropping of rock that had flowed like liquid at one point. She was patiently waiting while Toji arranged the ground defences for maximum effect. She was waiting for their guests.

She was, to say the least, different looking. She had been born with a fair complexion and blonde hair, but circumstances had bleached her skin an almost ashen alabaster tone and her hair the finest platinum blonde. When set against the black cloth and leather of her outfit, these made her look even paler, which all added up to contrast quite strikingly with her irises, which actually glowed a little with the power bubbling up within her.

Grasped in one hand was a scythe that was somewhat oversized for her but that she would no doubt one day grow into. Crafted of adamantium and decorated with the long bones from a human, right at the joint where the blade met the pole portion there was a large purple crystal.

As a large yellow circle set with various magical runes sprang into existence on the ground in front of the girl. The crystal part of the scythe said in a disembodied female voice, "I know this mage…"

Standing up, Ali tried to look calm and serene as was befitting her honoured status while a touch of excitement started to enter her heart. Could the gods have been so great as to have granted her this opportunity?

In a flash of light two figures appeared in the centre of the circle. Both were young women, one brown haired and the other blonde. Ali's eyes looked with the blonde haired woman and they evaluated each other. If one did not know the story they might think that Ali was a clone of the woman their features were so similar. The truth was of course much stranger.

Ali's staff broke the silence when it said in a mournful tone, "Fate…"

Immediately brightening up, Ali cried out, "Little sister!"


	21. Brawl

**Chapter Twenty: Brawl**

Fate stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock while she tried to regain her composure at this completely unexpected revelation, but her knees were as weak as if someone had just punched her the in the gut. She tried to get something out, but all that she said was, "What?"

Nanoha for her part could only stare on in shock at the incredible distress her best friend was going through, and the incredible, impossible reason for that shock.

"Fate…" the scythe said again. "I'm so sorry."

"M-mother?" Fate asked, on the verge of breaking down in one form or another.

"Yes Fate, it's Precia, and I am so sorry," the scythe replied.

"Momma got a stern talking too over what she did to you," the little girl who had been waiting for them stated.

"Why is she a _scythe_?" Nanoha asked in horror while Fate tried desperately to keep herself together. Precia had featured in her fondest dreams and her worst nightmares over the past eleven years. For her mother to _just say she was sorry and that she loved her _was one of her most desperately desired things in life.

"Technically momma isn't the scythe, she's just bound to it as punishment for what she did to little sister Fate," the girl, Alicia said. "Oh, and to help look after me!"

Fate clutched at her head and stomach as she tried not to burst out crying or throw up. "This- this is _impossible! _You both _died!_"

"Only momma died, and even then, not fully. My stasis pod sheltered me in the Warp until the gods found us. They restored me to health and recovered momma's soul," Alicia explained.

"So you're really Alicia?" Nanoha asked incredulously.

"You can call me Ali!" The girl said proudly. "The gods sent me here to meet whoever came to find out about this world, and they sent me my little sister! They really want to meet you."

"They truly are great beings. They made me realize that I had two daughters-" Precia began, but that was more than enough for Fate, who promptly screamed and collapsed to the ground.

"Little sister!" Ali cried out, rushing over to Fate, but a warding hand from Nanoha kept her away.

With a few quick gestures Nanoha immediately had Fate teleported away while requesting someone else to come down to assist. Looking at Alicia- Ali- she said, "I think your sister has had too much excitement for one day. She's spent a long time getting over the fact that both of you died, only for you to both show up now."

Ali frowned, but the disembodied voice of Precia said, "I understand. It will take time for her to understand what has happened. Just tell her that I have come to terms with my actions. I love both my daughters and wish that I could go back in time to fix the mistakes I made."

Nodding, Nanoha said sternly, "She will appreciate that, although you should know that she has had an adoptive mother for many years who has already told her that."

Precia was saddened for a moment before she said, "Then I wish to meet this woman and thank her for raising such a fine young girl."

"Now could you tell me what is going on?" Nanoha demanded.

Ali nodded and was just about to speak when a different voice emanated from the staff, obviously as some sort of radio function. It was a deep, imposing male voice that said, "Ali, we're going to need you to get airborne, something weird is going on."

* * *

The Battle of the Supergate had been… it had been going. So far it was a stalemate as while the defenders of the Milky Way had prevented any more motherships from getting through, neither could they actually _do _anything to the ships on the other side of the gate, nor in fact do anything to the gate itself. So far the battle had degenerated into a delicate balance in the fighter combat. If enough fighters got through to threaten the Lucian Alliance Ha'taks, or even distract them from their overwatch, then the Ori could start shoving through more ships.

Considering that enough firepower to slag several continents had been poured into them, the fact that the Ori ships were debris and not expanding balls of diffuse gas spoke rather much of their defensive capacities. They probably had offensive abilities to match too.

So far the fast firing Tau'ri railguns had been reaping a fearsome toll on the Ori fighters, convincing them to stay well away from the trio of battlecruisers, but unfortunately Milky Way fighters were outnumbered ten to one, with reinforcements for the Ori arriving through the gate as fast as they took losses. With the Tau'ri providing close in defence for the Alliance, the Jaffa were putting up an impressive wall of flak about the gate, trying to destroy fighters as they came through. Unfortunately, sheer weight of numbers had already grounded the surviving 302s, all their munitions expended, including reloads from the ships, and the Jaffa were down to a scant few death gliders left, the rest having been shot down already. Only the Lucian Alliance's death gliders were still putting up a good fight, their piloting weirdly synchronized and skilled while their weapons systems seemed to have all been upgraded for faster firing.

Still, it was a delicate numbers game, and all it took was for a single change in variables to tip the balance one way or another. The system almost immediately started to tip the instant PD turret #3 went silent on the _Odyssey _due to total ammunition expenditure. It wasn't that that gun itself was particularly important, it was just that within the next thirty seconds 75 of the remaining railguns on the Tau'ri ships also ran dry, so that was the exact turning point.

When the guns went silent on the Tau'ri ships the Ori fighters immediately began to swarm in closer, firing bolts of bright blue energy that splattered harmlessly against their shields while moving in to harass the Lucian Alliance ships. Scores immediately died as the Alliance's own PD turrets began firing, but the damage was done. Ha'taks were in many ways designed almost as inefficiently as possible, so a significant chunk of firepower that had been keeping the noses of the Ori from peeking out the gate was now diverted to swatting down fighters.

A new Ori ship surged through the gate before it was pummelled into oblivion. But with its death one ship managed to slip through unmolested and get off a shot with its main weapon, sending a brilliant beam of yellow-white light out to cut straight through a Jaffa Ha'tak with a single hit, immolating it in an instant. This monster was also brought down under the combined fire from the defensive fleet, but two more had already cleared the gate.

The Ori fighters had been almost completely cleared away, reinforcements having halted in favour of getting through more capital ships, but by now the character of the battle had radically shifted. Now it was a ship to ship fight and the Ori had the better ships. Still, whoever had command of the Alliance ships was skilled in the arts of battle beyond anything that had ever before been seen in the Milky Way. Fire continued to be concentrated on tiny points on the Ori ships, collapsing their shields. But as more and more Ori ships came through the gate and began ripping apart ships with their fire, the barrages could no longer take down the shields completely, merely overwhelm the energy buffers for a few seconds.

The Tau'ri however had copied the trick the Ori had used to get so many of their fighters through the gate by sneaking several of their naquadah enhanced warheads through the debris field and then turning off their motors. For a time the Alliance ships would knock down the shields and there would be a conveniently placed twenty gigaton warhead sitting next to the ship. Eventually though they wised up and started shooting any bit of debris that got too close.

_Twenty _Ori motherships had emerged from the gate by the time they stopped coming, but _twelve _had been utterly destroyed by the tactics displayed during the battle, as only at the end did the numbers turn in their favour. The necessity of using a Stargate meant that for a few seconds each mothership had to fight alone against such overwhelming odds that their technological advantage was useless.

But with each Milky Way ship that fell, the numerical advantage diminished and the ability to take down a single Ori ship became a more difficult task. Each ship lasted longer and more of its fellows could get past the gauntlet that was exiting the gate, allowing more of the defenders to be taken down.

Of the eight ships that emerged, four immediately broke off and headed towards the other side of the ruined solar system, while four lined up, weathering the remaining fire effortlessly, and took up a stance best described of as a firing line.

* * *

"What do you think, would right about now be a good time to kick up Warp storm about Bloodhaven and boot that ship into real space?" Tzintchi asked the other gods.

"You are such a bastard," Asukhon groused.

* * *

The _Eventide _had thought that they were safe about the strange world trapped in interdimensional space, thinking from all the observed data that there was some sort 'Eye of the Storm' effect going on about it. So the sudden turbulence that began to occur caught them off guard.

"We have to stay close if we want to pick up Nanoha and Vita!" Hayate cried out as distorting space-time began to toss the _Eventide _about.

"We need to revert to normal space before we're stuck, colonel! We'll still be close enough if we remain within the same solar system," the navigator announced as he put in the commands to the computer.

"Do it!" Hayate ordered.

* * *

"I think they should arrive… right _here_," Tzintchi said as he manipulated space and time about the tiny warship.

* * *

The sudden appearance of the _Eventide _just under the firing line of one of the Ori ships as it was firing was a bit of a shock to all parties involved. The beam struck the frigate's shields, splashing off the enormous seal that formed in open space for a second before punching through and clipping the top of the ship. Damage was superficial, but it still scared the crap out of everyone onboard and confused the hell out of the Ori.

"Who the hell are they?" Penderghast asked incredulously while getting his ship out of the way of the next shot. The first one brought against the _Prometheus _had nearly knocked out their shields, and if it hadn't been for the sudden appearance of this mystery ship their shields probably would have failed completely.

Hiding behind the as of yet undamaged _Korolev_, the Tau'ri considered their options. They were out of ammo and had no way of actually hurting the Ori ships, but no one wanted to abandon the battle quite yet. For one thing, they were still able to evacuate many Jaffa with their Asgard transporters, and for another they did not want to abandon anyone to the coming slaughter.

The Ori for their part seemed content to figure out what exactly to do, seeing as they were in no real rush. Meanwhile the other four ships began to do something weird in the space where Bloodhaven should have been. The four ships arranged themselves in a square pattern in a potential orbit and then aligned their ships so that each one's main weapon could fire through the rear hoop section of another. As one they all fired.

For a brief second a gigantic loop of energy formed in space, each ship adding to a superconductive cycle until finally a world began to ripple into existence within their ring. The Ori were going to draw Bloodhaven back into a place where they could get at it.

* * *

Asukhon fingered the model that represented the Eva on Bloodhaven and grinned in a feral manner, showing off too many teeth. "Not today boys. Not fucking today."

* * *

The Prior aboard the unlucky ship only vaguely saw his death coming as it rose out of the atmosphere; a dull grey spear bisected down the middle into two points. During the operation his shields had to remain down, but even if they had been up they would not have protected him from the phasing ability of a copy of the Lance of Longinus. The massive weapon impacted the ship right in the middle and ripped out its engine in a spectacular fire ball. The supercharged beam was also knocked out of alignment and flash vaporized the next ship in the formation before the entire cycle collapsed.

Two of the four ships tasked with cleaning up the remaining Milky Way defenders immediately broke off to assist in finishing the job while the other two decided to ignore the newcomer for the moment. It was small and the Ha'taks could still threaten them a bit if they all focused fire.

Meanwhile, the Ori took advantage of Bloodhaven being partially drawn into real space by deploying swarms of specialized fighter-bombers carrying payloads of ring transporters. Hundreds of them in fact. With the supergate properly oriented, they could beam through thousands of troops a second.

* * *

Ali had taken off in flight and Nanoha, joined by Vita in replacement for the now comatose Fate, had followed in an attempt to figure out what was going on. Of the two, Vita was the first to raise the subject when she said, "Where in the hell are we going?"

"Air superiority mission," Ali said simply. "I'm currently the only air mobile unit in our order of battle capable of engaging the enemy. We would really love it if you two helped out though." She then pointed high into the sky where numerous streaks from re-entry fires marked the strange, fragmented sky.

Pausing in her flight, Ali summoned forth an indigo circular seal to act as a firing platform. The sigils present on the flat disc of energy were a bizarre mix of Mid-childa script and other, stranger symbols, along with what appeared to be corruptions of Japanese kanji to Nanoha's eyes.

Pointing her staff, her mother, at the oncoming streaks of fire, Ali's facial expression changed from quietly innocent if somewhat unsettling to excessively enthusiastic. A quartet of smaller seals formed in front of her and bright blue points of light crackling with electricity coalesced at their centres.

"Lightning Flak Assault! Fire!" Ali cried out, and suddenly the four seals began spitting out rapid fire orbs of energy, which proceeded to do as the name suggested and created a wall of flak in the sky where the enemy fighters were incoming. Secondary explosions soon followed.

"What should we do Nanoha?" Vita asked nervously while she watched Ali marching her shots up and down the line of machines.

The question however was answered for them when the enemy began firing on their position and did not seem inclined to distinguish between the three of them.

"Defend ourselves and Ali too. I don't think Fate would be pleased if we stood by," Nanoha said while holding using a Round Shield to protect against the barrage of blue-white energy bolts hurled their way.

In short order pink and red fireworks joined Ali's blue in blowing Ori fighters out of the sky. There were however, far too many of them coming in on two broad a front for the three of them to knock down every one of them and dozens got through to drop their pay loads on the barren ground below.

Taking a quick glance at what had happened Ali then let out a high pitched, psychotic cackle and cried out, "You should have brought _bombs!_" She then broke away from her fixed position while calling out, "Toji, they're landing _troops_!"

The response from her scythe was a low pitched chuckle.

Nanoha and Vita shared a significant look at that.

* * *

For his part, Toji had brought along a company of his own personal chapter along with a company from each of the two successor chapters, the Bearers and the Reavers. That gave him three hundred marines, a few dozen daemons, an Evangelion, and a couple million plague zombies with which to fight an unknown number of enemy troops with air support.

Toji smiled. Unless the enemy ran right into the zombies that made the fight a massacre rather than a complete and utter curb stomp. Considering that only the Priors or the aircraft had a hope in hell of actually _damaging _his marines or the daemons, the bastards should have stayed off this world.

He was almost tempted to exclude the Evangelion from combat to make things from getting too one-sided, but he needed it providing cover against precision orbital bombardment, so it would be involved anyway. He would have preferred to just have it knocked the ships out of orbit, but unfortunately the hastily constructed copy of the Lance had not held up against the detonation of the ship it had destroyed.

_Cheap Japanese knock-off_ Toji thought with intentional perverse irony.

The first order of business would be to prevent the solidification of the enemy's lines by disrupting their staging area. There were two forces especially well suited to that: the Terminators from his Sons, and the assault squads from the Reavers. They had the speed to get in close before the enemy could formulate a defensive line, and the hitting power to prevent them from doing so.

Toji was so glad he had decided to wear his Terminator armour today.

Clamping down his helmet to secure him from the corrosive effects of the Warp, Toji ordered in a somewhat metallic voice, "All right boys, we're fighting guys more fanatically than us. Let's go teach them whose gods are stronger!"

That got a laugh from his men right before he activated the teleporters. There was a brief discontinuity as they were hurled through the Warp, but then with a bang of displacing air they appeared in the midst of the Ori staging area as hundreds of men in battle armour were pouring out of dozens of ring transporters every second. They were given a brief look at the war gods in their midst before the shooting started.

Storm bolters, heavy flamers, reaper autocannons, and assault cannons all combined together in an instant to create a circle of death where the Ori troops simply ceased to exist as men and began to exist as a fine mist of blood and ash.

Meanwhile, nearly across the horizon the Reavers began their assault, loading up into what was quite possibly the most insane device ever devised by man. Shortly after their founding, the Reavers had asked the question, "How do you do a drop pod assault without a ship in orbit?"

The result had been to build a mobile double barrelled rail launcher capable of hurling two marines at a time almost ten kilometres through the air before they fired their jet packs to slow down to a safe speed and land on top of their enemies. Even more insane, they had already scrapped the first production run in favour of a magazine type system and specialized capacitors that allowed them to -with proper preparation- put an entire squad into the air in about five seconds.

The Reavers had brought _four _of these monstrosities against common sense.

Of course, the only reason that they actually survived the acceleration involved was because their armour incorporated gravity and inertial dampers based off of Eldar flip belts, along with several other tricks.

While the Ori soldiers in the middle of the formation ran and screamed from the unholy, invulnerable beasts that had suddenly appeared in their midst, the ones on the outskirts only warning as to the doom falling upon them was the sound of jet engines firing and the whirring of chainsaws.

Oh, and of course the screams of "_BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!_"

* * *

Hayate had watched in horror at the battle around her and had made her decision. With the dimensional dislocation going on, they could not escape to interdimensional space, and when stranded in the middle of a fight with no way to escape, her only options were to pick a side or do nothing at all and hope no one shot at the _Eventide_.

On the one side, she had the hoop ships, who while she was willing to give the benefit of the doubt for damaging her ship due to her rather unexpected arrival, she had witnessed them destroying ships unable to do anything to them. On the other side, she had seen strange, pyramid shaped ships firing at the hoop ships, and blockier ships actively catching shots from their less well defended allies. Those ships weren't even fighting back, just covering the retreat of the others.

Hayate had been given the key in her hand for a reason. That reason was to defend her ship, not to start wars. But she had a feeling that once these hoop ships finished off the others, they would come for her. She would make sure that they would not have that chance.

"Activate the Arc-en-Ceil. Target the hoop ships to prevent the destruction of the other side," Hayate ordered as she inserted the activation key.

Outside, ahead of the pronged bow of the _Eventide_, large magical containment rings began to form, designed to channel the destructive power about to be unleashed in a focused manner.

One of the hoop ships paused in its targeting of one of the few remaining pyramid ships to consider the _Eventide_. The targeting of the Arc-en-Ceil had left the frigate pointed slightly between and below the plane of both of the ships, so a direct attack was ruled out. In fact, with the positioning of the containment rings, if they did not understand the magical technology at work they may very well have thought that the TSAB vessel was attempting to engage some form of propulsion.

Eventually the ship decided that they did not want them to finish whatever it was that they were doing, even if it was just escape, and began to orient to bring its main gun to bear on them. That solidified Hayate's assessment in her mind and she turned the key.

The _Eventide _fired and a point in space simply buckled and folded in on itself. The distortions rushed out at the speed of light before tapering off a hundred kilometres from the epicentre. Matter was torn apart atom by atom, and the two Ori motherships simply stopped existing, reduced to a cloud of cold free atoms scattered about the remnants of this dead star system, to in time be consumed by the artificially created black hole powering the supergate.

As for the supergate, it abruptly shut off, the disruption of local space-time automatically tripping the safety overrides.

Every ship paused and gaped in horror and awe at what that little ship had just done. Across the system the remaining Ori ships ceased their action to draw Bloodhaven further into real space and instead turned as one to take care of this new and unexpectedly dangerous threat.

"We won't be able to recharge before they get here," one of the bridge techs reported. "And all of the ships are staying at least two hundred kilometres apart. A single shot from one of their guns will overwhelm our shields."

"But not _theirs_," Hayate noted with pride and awe as the battered defenders took up station about the _Eventide_, ready to defend them with their lives. They did not even have compatible communications protocols, and yet these people would protect them.

* * *

"_Interesting…_" Tzintchi stated while he let the Warp storm dissipate as quickly as it had begun. A star ship sized distortion cannon. He would have to ask the engineers about _that _one.

* * *

"Colonel! The dislocation is clearing up!" The sensor officer reported, surprised at the shortness of such an intense event.

"Begin charging the engines. I want us out of here as quickly as possible!" Hayate ordered. "I also want Nanoha and Vita back on board at the first opportunity."

* * *

The entire character of the battle changed for Nanoha the moment that Ali took a glancing hit from one of the fighter-bomber's cannons. It was a very slight hit that was mostly absorbed by her magic, but Ali had clearly taken some damage. But instead of crying out in pain, Ali had snarled in a fashion very out of place for a young girl. What she had then done had cemented the niggling feeling that what was going on was not right. The ground fighting had been brutal, but Nanoha was not adverse to lethal force and she understood that in war people died. She didn't _like _it, but the fact that the people that Ali was working with were killing others did not disturb her.

What Ali did however scared the _living fuck _out of Nanoha.

Taking off in pursuit of the exact craft that had wounded her, Ali caught up with it and plunged her scythe into the front, peeling it open like a tin can to reveal the pilot inside and then causing him to tumble out of his rapidly disintegrating craft. Ali pursued him as he fell flailing and screaming from the sky, letting him look at the ground for a while before she buried her blade in his gut and then stopped, leaving him suspended from her scythe like a worm on a hook.

She then cried out, "Soul Stealer!" and a set of ugly sigils appeared around her right hand. Cackling loudly she shoved her hand in the struggling man's chest and ripped out his _heart_. But that was not all she pulled out, for even as she ripped her scythe out of the now dead body and let the two halves tumble to the ground, a faint blue, transparent outline of the man remained, centred about the still beating heart in Ali's hand.

She then _bit down into the heart _like an apple, squirting blood all over her pale face while the outline screamed in psychic agony and dissolved.

Nanoha and Vita watched all of this in mute, wide eyed horror while Nanoha clutched her chest in memory of eleven years ago when Shamal had stuck her hand through her chest to drain her Linker Core.

It was Vita who screamed out, "_WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST _DO_!_"

Turning and looking at them in innocent confusion despite the still hot blood sticking to her face and hair, Ali then said, "Battlefield medicine. I ate his soul, and its energy healed me up. See?" She then pointed to the area where she had been hit and indeed she was healed.

"You're insane!" Vita cried out.

"Why would you do something like that?" Nanoha asked in confusion.

"Because I can," Ali replied with a shrug. "Now we have a battle to get back to."

"I don't think so! I suddenly wonder if maybe the people you are fighting aren't the good guys here!" Nanoha announced.

Ali paused and then bared her scythe menacingly, flicking off some of the blood before saying, "You're Fate's friend, and you shouldn't be saying things like that. You should be with us."

"Ali, do not push the issue, they do not have all the facts," Precia warned.

"No momma! No one stands aside, no one does nothing! Everyone acts! That's Chaos! That's who we are. Now pick a side!" Ali shouted out angrily before moving her scythe into a ready position.

"You killed a man and _ate his soul! _We can't be allied with anyone who does something like that!" Nanoha replied while she and Vita took up their own guard stances.

"Then _die!_" Ali cried out, launching at them.

* * *

"With the charge time for their weapon, those people won't be able to get off another successful shot, especially now that the Ori know what to look for," Carter pointed out.

"So far they've saved two Lucian Alliance and three Free Jaffa Ha'taks, and the _Korolev_. I think that deserves a little more of our time," Penderghast stated. So far only the _Prometheus _and the _Odyssey _remained, the other ships having already escaped to hyperspace once their battered drives were ready. If the other ships had not been given the breathing time from the destruction of the two ships and the shut down of the supergate, it was doubtful they would have escaped.

"Sir, the supergate is powering up again!" The sensor officer shouted out over the sound of the damage control crews suppressing fires on the bridge.

The four motherships remaining almost immediately turned back around to the planet they were working on getting back into real space.

"I've got a bad feeling that we're about to meet something we won't like," Mitchell muttered.

Just barely clearing the bounds set by the supergate, this latest monstrosity was a good two or three times more massive than the other ships and significantly more solid, not having the large space wasting hoop at the back. _Its _main gun looked capable of one shot killing one of the smaller Ori ships.

"Always with the super weapons," Daniel muttered.

"Okay, valour and honour are all well and good, but we can't do anything against _that_. Helm, get us out of here," Penderghast ordered.

On a somewhat more optimistic note at least the last thing they saw before leaping to hyperspace away from that monster was the unknown ship making a similar get away.

* * *

The fight in the air above Bloodhaven had turned into a three way brawl between the Ori fighters, the TSAB 'diplomats', and Ali. By far the Ori were taking the worst of it, as whenever they tried to take pot shots at the either of the other two sides they kept getting turned into atomic vapour.

And while Ali had plenty of raw power and tricks that no one from the TSAB had ever seen before, she was unfortunately outnumbered and ultimately outgunned. Against either Nanoha or Vita she might have been able to force a draw, but with both of them she was slowly being worn away. Worse yet, the cartridge system was something she could not counter.

So Ali changed the conditions of the scenario. She dived down out of the sky, breaking the sound barrier during the fall before abruptly flattening off, skimming about two metres above the ground in the middle of the slaughter occurring below as three hundred space marines tore through thousands of Ori soldiers. Not missing an opportunity, Ali let her scythe reap a grim harvest through the ranks of those who followed Origin, slowing down slightly until she stopped above a cluster of particularly gigantic marines, one of them squeezing an old man in his enormous fist until marrow squirted out of his bones.

Vita, being the close-combat specialist, was the one who fell into the trap while Nanoha could only watch on from a distance.

Ali threw out a hand and cried out, "Banshee Wail!" which caused an enormous outburst of sound and light that caught Vita completely off guard, blinding her senses.

The marines beneath her were _not _so affected though, their helmets and sensor suites quite handily filtering out the interference.

A single shot range out.

Graf Eisen hit the ground and skittered away while the one who had taken the shot caught the nearly bisected body with his enormous gauntleted hand, being careful not to crush the tiny frame.

"She lives!" Toji cried out to Nanoha. "I know not why, but she does… _at my whim! _Go, retreat from this place before your presence makes me change my mind!"

Tears running down her face, Nanoha began to line up a head shot on the giant, but he simply moved his hand so that one of the troops could point a massive flamethrower at Vita's unconscious body.

"Do you think you can kill both of us without killing your comrade?" Toji asked. "If you leave, she will get medical attention. If you stay, we can wait right here until she bleeds out. Your choice."

Nanoha hesitated and then ran.

"Thank you Toji, but are we really going to help here?" Ali asked with a sour look on her face. "She is our enemy."

"You have much to learn little one. Especially one how to corrupt people," Toji said before surveying the battlefield. The sky had been completely broken apart now, the dull red provided by the Warp replaced with a starlit sky faintly illuminated by the ring around the planet.

The ring transporters had gone silent, and Toji chuckled. "Clever, but not effective enough. Status report, how quickly can we get our forces within a one kilometre radius?"

Listening to his communication network, Toji smiled and said, "Perfect. Evangelion, I request you come to this location immediately. We're getting out of here."

"What? How?" Ali asked.

"A little trick we learned from one of the Angels. We can't go very far, but fortunately the gods had enough foresight to establish a base within range of this move," Toji said as the forces under his command assembled as he had ordered, especially the gigantic Eva.

Once he was satisfied they had everything they could recover, he said, "Commence Operation Leliel."

* * *

In orbit the massive Ori dreadnought took up position in orbit above the battlefield, its main gun charging up to full power; superconducting rings about the primary emitter glowing white with the barely contained energy. Bloodhaven would trouble the Ori no more.

The dreadnought fired a massive lance of energy that stabbed down into Bloodhaven and immediately boiled off the atmosphere where it struck. The rock beneath the beam went from solid to liquid to gas to plasma in a few thousand seconds and immediately expanded outward in a massive pressure explosion that ripped up a continent sized hole. Still the dreadnought continued to fire, boring down towards the core. It did not make it before the capacitors gave out, but it did punch a hole thirty-five kilometres deep and five kilometres wide, although the eventual final crater would be much wider and shallower. Already the tectonic plates of the world were collapsing inward, ripping the surface of the world apart while ejecta from the blast and the sudden surge in volcanic activity was already darkening the skies.

The Ori let up their attack and settled into a brooding orbit about the star they had killed, not making much of a deal even when Bloodhaven once more sank into the Warp. They did not care. The planet was dead as it could be without detonating a ZPM on its surface.

Or so they thought.


	22. Meanwhile

Okay, so maybe I've taken a little while in updating but that was because you all said mean things about me! Snort Yeah, right. I will admit that maybe for an epic battle the last chapter wasn't very well filled out, but this fic is nowhere near as serious as Thousand Shinji and quite frankly I haven't been giving it my A game half the time. But enough of that, I have oh... eight more chapters already written, not counting this one, so how's an update a day for the next week sound?

**Chapter Twenty-One: Meanwhile**

The effects of Halloween night had far a far ranging impact all across the multiverse, most notably for a certain god of plotting who had _not _seen it coming. Tzeentch was still actually trying to figure out what had happened, as the event in question had not affected any of his agents, and he had yet to sink his claws into anyone who had. What was really annoying was that it was sending mortals out of their nice, predictable tracks and causing him some grief. True, Tzeentch _always _had a back-up plan, but sometimes the results didn't come out as well, and an interlocking plan that took two thousand years to set up properly could come crashing down because a street urchin sneezed three seconds too early.

Of course, that was just the standard stuff. What was _really _bothering him was the fact that he had lost track of Leman Russ. Primarchs were not the sort of things a schemer could just lose track of; if they weren't safely contained then they could do enormous amounts of damage.

The big, unsubtle, plan wrecking oaf was probably wandering the Webway somewhere. He'd done that a few times before, but each time Tzeentch had known the Primarch's objective and destination and so could work around him. He would have to drop some hint to Ahriman next time the sorcerer was…

Oh… _crap!_

* * *

All things considered, Ahriman had been having a good day, leading his band of sorcerers and their attached armies of obedient, soul bound soldiers in shooting up the Eldar Harlequins and interrogating a few of them to try and refine the location of the Black Library further. It had been about average for that sort of thing, which of course meant that he gained little to no new information, but when your plans ran on thousand year time scales, it didn't pay to be impatient about day to day affairs.

He was really starting to get irritated by the shadowseers though. Tricky bastards kept trying to get through his mental defences and confuse him with illusions and other such psychic shenanigans. While he felt quite confident in his status as the most powerful sorcerer in the galaxy, nay, the universe, Ahriman did have to admit that alien scum were skilled at what they did.

He was just better.

The problem was that they liked to layer their illusions, using multiple different physical, holographic, and psychic methods of hiding what they were really doing, so that getting to the core of what was really going on required peeling back multiple layers, with each successive layer designed to make you think you had found reality. It was exquisitely Tzeentchian, but still could get annoying when it came to actually fighting against the Harlequins.

Take for example the current situation. He had encountered a group of Eldar at a junction in the Webway running away very quickly. To him, that screamed ambush, but the question as always was in which direction? The obvious mind said that the ambush was set up down the path the Harlequins had followed, but truly any direction was possible, even from behind him.

The first step in deciphering this trap was to figure out what elements were real and which ones were false. The first element of course was figuring out if the Harlequins were real, which was not as simple as it sounded. Oh sure, he could just fire at them and see which ones dropped, but that often wasn't a very good indicator and sometimes they _wanted _him to open fire. With a slight nod of his head as he sent his mental powers to unwind the strands of illusion, and abruptly about half of the Harlequins disappeared.

The gigantic warrior with the oversized two handed sword and the rhino sized wolves at his side _was_ a new twist, Ahriman had to admit. Apparently they wanted him to think that one of those damnable Space Wolves had found their way into the Webway and was chasing them.

Now the question was whether or not this was an illusion meant to distract him or an illusion meant to conceal another force. Interesting dilemma, for if they timed it right they could potentially catch him off guard if he chose wrong. What to focus on?

The answer of course, was neither option, as getting caught in false dichotomies was an easy way to get killed. In a scenario involving two options, the Eldar invariably chose the fourth one, so Ahriman would have to pick the fifth to derail this entire thing.

Ah, of course, his back! The attack would come from the rear while he decided on…

All of this occurred in about half a second, at which point Ahriman suddenly considered that maybe, just _maybe_ the Harlequins _had _been chased by a Space Wolf. The thought occurred to him as he was hurled through the air by the impact of the warrior's sword on his armour. All things considered he was rather fortunate that the man had cleaved through two of his best sorcerers _before _striking him or he would have been bisected as surely as those unfortunate bastards.

Raising a hand, Ahriman tried to engulf the burly, hairy warrior in a storm of electricity, but unfortunately all that seemed to do was annoy the man and draw his attention, something that should have been impossible…

Unless of course Ahriman had just tried to attack a Primarch who had survived for ten thousand years in the Eye of Terror fighting daemons and traitor marines every step of the way and had a particular grudge against sorcerers of Tzeentch, in which case Ahriman was probably about to be obliterated body and soul.

_Fuck._

* * *

Now that the traitorous scum had been eliminated, Leman Russ could go back to considering those foul xenos that had shot at him and drawn him into this place. Wiping off his sword, the last thing other than his Wolf Brothers that he had left since he had started his journey, Russ surveyed the location. He instinctively knew that he was in the Warp somewhere, but it seemed like he was just in some sort of tunnel made of stone.

"Thank you, Son of the Emperor," a disembodied voice told him.

Growling, Russ spun about, weapon at the ready while he scanned out with all of his sense. He knew that the xeno that had uttered those words was around here somewhere…

"Please, we mean you no harm," the voice replied.

"Lies," Russ spat.

"It is true. We led you here because we desired you to remove that pest Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, something we knew you would do if we showed you in the right direction," the voice said.

Snorting, Russ asked, "And do you expect some favour from me now for this service you have provided me?"

"On the contrary, it is _we _who owe _you_," the voice replied.

"Forgive me if I don't believe you xeno," Russ said.

"Look at your feet," the voice said. Glancing down with one eye while not taking his attention away from anything else, Russ noted that there was a small box at his feet. Gesturing to Freki, he let the wolf pick it up for him so that he would not have to stoop and lower his guard. Taking it from his brother, Russ flicked it open and discovered that it was an antique compass.

"What is this?" Russ asked.

"A most interesting device, nearly as old as your Emperor and from the same place. An artefact of your world, it is a compass that is as true as the heart of the one holding it. It will lead you to where you want to go, even if you do not know where that place is. On your world it led men to treasures of all sorts, but when your kind began to explore the stars it truly came into its own. It is greater than an Navigator for it can steer you clear through any Warp current or storm, and it can even open up new paths," the disembodied voice explained.

Russ considered the compass for a moment, and noted that it was pointing solidly in one direction, which was straight into a wall.

"So you're saying that if I follow this compass it will lead me to what I want most?" Russ asked sceptically and incredulously.

"Eventually. It may lead you to the places you need to go to get to your final destination first," the voice said.

"And where does it think I should go now?" Russ asked with a sneer.

"To find the world of Sunnydale where your brother's soul fought," the voice answered.

Surprised, Russ barked out, "What do you know of such things?"

"I know that I was there that night, caught in the same evil snare as your brother, although I believe he _knew _what was coming and chose to follow the path of the spell anyway simply to stop the Great Enemy from gaining an inch of influence elsewhere. I know that I helped him to end the spell by freeing many from the curse, and he repaid the favour by smashing my body to a pulp, as I had hoped he would," the voice said.

Russ considered his words carefully before he tilted the compass so that it was pointing down. "And how will it help me when it is so limited?"

"Just follow where the arrow points," the voice replied.

"What? Into the ground?" Russ asked.

"Sure," the voice said with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

Lowering himself, Russ was shocked to discover the ground begin to buckle and distort as he brought the compass closer. Tilting it away, the surface immediately ceased bowing inward like a piece of melting plastic suspended over empty space in the centre. It was only when the arrow pointed at the walls, floor, or ceiling did the affect occur.

"Follow it," the voice prompted.

So Russ followed it, his wolf brothers following him, as he blazed a new trail into the Webway before it rapidly vanished.

Once Leman Russ had disappeared, the Harlequin who had been speaking to him detached from the walls, the illusion dropping while the rest of the troupe joined up. Peering down at the new path, they considered following, before deciding that giving the Primarch a better head start would be a good idea. A couple of hours.

Glancing about at the corpses of the Thousand Sons soldiers ripped apart by the ancient warrior and his wolf companions, the Harlequins upped the wait time to a day. Maybe two.

Seeing the broken corpse of Ahriman, ten thousand year old soldier who had slowly been closing in on the Black Library, and was now out of their hair forever, the troupe realized that a celebration was in order. One that would take at _least _a week.

Of course, they would need a good tracker for that. Maybe ask one of the Craftworlds or an Exodite colony to lend them a ranger or two. Then again, that could take a while. A month maybe. Still, there was so much to do that the delay seemed inevitable.

* * *

Across the galaxy every seer with at least some degree of long term power suddenly discovered that they had a rather large headache as lines of fate began to twist up and tangle as a key player vanished from existence. While in most places the changes were minimal and thus the headaches minor, for those like Eldar Farseers, the unexpected death of Ahriman was like getting a thunder hammer to the side of the head.

For one Farseer in particular, it was just the continuation of a months long headache. Ever since that night she had seen fate slowly spinning out of control. She understood how small changes could generate enormous results when allowed to continue long enough, and pretty much all the players in the game of fate knew how that could work for them or bite them in the ass.

But _this _was different. This wasn't a butterfly flapping its wings at the wrong juncture, this was someone shelling the forest where the butterfly resided, and no one had noticed the bastard setting up the artillery, which was really more of a disturbance than the butterfly anyway.

And now that everything was falling apart, all the seers with precious little plans were running about in a blind panic because everything was going to hell, which was only adding to the damage. This was little c chaos and it was driving Big C Chaos nuts! Unfortunately, it was also driving the Eldar nuts!

Finally the Farseer had had enough. It was time to go find those Harlequin idiots and get them to show her what they had done. Somehow, she suspected that they had probably found a way to that bloody Mon-keigh world that had started all of this. And when she got there, she was going to introduce the architect of this headache to a new world of suffering.


	23. In Medias Res

Just so you know, I was being facetious with my opening statement last chapter, more making fun of my long delay than actually complaining that people were making fun of me, because no one ever did. So don't go off on any crusades against percieved mistreatment of the author so that you will continue to get updates.

**Chapter Twenty-Two: In Medias Res**

Picard sat quietly, picking over the remnants of the Chaos base and examining the various artefacts with an archaeologist's trained eye. The pragmatic part of him was trying to say that this would give the Federation valuable insights into a dangerous culture that could help them to better understand them in any future encounters.

The rest of him said that he was trying to run and hide, metaphorically, from the memories of what had happened.

Still, looking at the various bits and pieces left behind by a year's worth of habitation and a rapid evacuation, Picard did not think that understanding these people was possible. As far as he could tell, they had created the so-called "Year of Chaos" for _fun._

What an awful, terrible year it had been for the Federation. First the _Stiletto _had shown up in the Damocles nebula, then the war with the Dominion had broken out, and then the Borg had shown up again! The only silver lining was that the _Stiletto _had aggravated the Cardassians as equally as the Federation and when the Dominion had blitzed through the wormhole their first order of business was to try and clear up the biggest threat to their operations: the only ship in the quadrant capable of moving undetected and at unimaginable speed.

Well, the fact that the Borg had been largely uninterested in the Federation this time around was also something that many had counted their blessings on, but the fact was that the greatest threat to the existence of the Federation had successfully established a route to the Alpha Quadrant.

Emphasis on _had_. Those that followed Chaos seemed to enjoy simply fighting and the Borg had been quite thoroughly kicked out of the Alpha Quadrant. For now. Of course, they would probably be back, especially since they had no idea that their target had disappeared to parts unknown.

Sighing, Picard shook his head to try and banish the wool gathering tendencies and to focus upon the inscriptions he had gathered from one of the temples, trying to decipher the underlying meaning. The language itself was terrifyingly in a form of English, but it was filled with confusing metaphors and paradoxes. Just like the people in general he supposed.

These people had access to technology that made the Borg drool, and yet they often used it intentionally in archaic and primitive ways. For example, the inscription he was reading had been, according to analysis of debris, carved by hand into the stone wall using polylaminate titanium-steel chisels with diamond edges, and wooden hammers. The chisels were absolute overkill considering the fact that the hammers and muscle power had been the limiting fact, and for the fine work required the sort of industrial grade system that would have actually found such a chisel useful would have not worked.

The worst bit was that they had apparently made the chisels on site because they also had fusion cutters capable of better precision work at a higher speed elsewhere.

It was almost as if they enjoyed a certain degree of inefficiency. So far the best hypothesis was that the one who had made the chisels had quite simply been _showing off_.

Of course, showing off appeared to be a major part of the culture of these people. Again, with these inscriptions, there were accompanying pictures to depict what was happening, and as the process had gone on at least two of the artists had got into some sort of bizarre contest where they tried to increase the baroque grotesqueness of their work.

The overall story was apparently a creation one, and it was highly unpleasant, although considering some of the other things they had found, just being unpleasant was actually a high point. It detailed the rise and fall of entire pantheons of gods and the people that worshipped them, and all of them seemed to be extraordinarily evil. One set, called Star Vampires, apparently ate stars for sustenance, people for pleasure, and had apparently killed everyone who worshipped them and turned them into walking corpses. They were at war with a number of different pantheons, who were in turn at war with each other. Every one of these gods seemed to demand the sacrifice of sentient life, except for a pair mentioned in passing that seemed to just enjoy breaking things. There was also vague mention of a Great Devourer that had been trying to kill and eat everything in its path before the end came.

At that point the story got weird. Apparently the Star Vampires had been on the verge of victory when all of the other gods had put aside their differences long enough to destroy the world, including themselves, before reincarnating into four mortals, who were now the current gods worshipped by Chaos, but apparently they had aspects of all the others as well.

It was a long, bloody, violent story that told of many, many great ages that had come crashing down due to the actions of others. Picard had the feeling that these people were a splinter colony of another group who had run to escape a devastating war. Various comments during the brief moments of communication with them indicated that they had very recently gone through a phase of great suffering.

But that didn't make sense! This was a rich, complex mythology filled with strange symbolism that indicated roots in a pre-FTL civilization, and yet these people had technology far in advance of the Borg. They should not have incorporated recent events into their mythology; they should have already known that there were no such things as gods.

"Oh, are there now?" A familiar voice said behind Picard.

Whirling about a touch too quickly, Picard winced and clutched at his still healing right arm before hissing out, "Q!"

Wearing a more typical Starfleet uniform than the last time they had met, the trickster alien said, "So charged, _mon capitaine_. I must say that I am impressed with your actions a month ago. Very clever. Very noble. It took a great deal of courage to do what you did, and I salute you for that."

"And it also led to me being trapped here," Picard said while waving with his still healthy left arm to the dimly lit storage room where he had taken up residence, rummaging through the abandoned bins for the ration packs that had been left behind.

"If it comforts you any, you saved a great number of lives. I mean, from _my _perspective you all live about the same length of time as cockroaches so a decade or two here or there seems all rather inconsequential," Q said before lounging on one of the pallets.

Frowning, Picard was about to say something when he suddenly thought about what was happening. Glaring at Q, he said, "You would not come here to mock me while I wait for the life support of this base to run down, that's not your style. You like to taunt me, but you always have some sort of lesson in store."

"_Moi?_" Q said with clearly fake offence. "Trying to teach you primitive apes anything is quite beneath me, and I must sadly say, above even my considerable talents. Of course, since you seem to occasionally get lucky and learn _a _lesson, even if it was not one intended, I suppose I could 'throw you a bone', as the colloquialism delightfully goes."

Getting up, Q picked up a statuette Picard had been studying, cast from bronze and allowed to develop a bright green patina. It featured an ethereal young woman coiled about a gigantic warrior in sexual embrace. Smiling wryly, he said, "This statuette has bothered you since you saw it, and not in the same way that some of the symbols in this place hurt your eyes. There is something about it that you cannot quite place, something familiar."

Picard glanced at it and admitted, "Yes, there is."

"What part of it picks at your brain, like a scratch on the roof of your mouth?" Q asked.

Taking the idol from the alien entity, Picard looked it over once more before he said, "It is the warrior. It is like I have seen him before."

"You have. When you pulled the little stunt that got you stuck here, you saw him in the halls," Q explained.

Picard blinked and looked at the statue again. Yes, he _had _seen a face like that, but the man it had been attached to…

"It was that man who was nearly twice my height!" Picard cried out. He then remembered where he had found the statuette. It had been in a secluded cave, _far _too small for that giant to have ever been.

"Bingo. This is an icon featuring him and his wife, ahem, _consummating _their marriage," Q explained.

"Curious. I had thought that this was a fertility icon when I first discovered it, but-" Picard began.

"Actually, it's _not _a fertility icon. It's a _contraceptive _icon," Q corrected.

Blinking, Picard said, "I suppose that does explain why there were unused barrier contraceptives scattered about it, but that while I can see a tribal society picking a great warrior to serve as the inspiration for fertility, I can't see them turning a living warrior into a contraceptive icon. Of course, a tribal association doesn't make much sense for these people as not only do they possess technology in advance of our own, but they show clear evidence of knowing how to maintain and even adapt what they already have to new uses, which implies that they should have a more advanced social model."

"What if they _do _have a more advanced social model and they _do _know what they are doing. What if I told you that the contraceptive idol you carry was constructed by a society that had long ago discovered the scientific method and in fact had already excised itself of the majority of its superstitions," Q asked, somewhat mockingly.

Frowning, Picard considered the question before him. Finally he began talking, more to himself than to Q. "Everything produced by sentient life must have some purpose, even if that purpose is immediately, or even ultimately, useful from the perspective of an outsider. Typically something such as this would have religious or spiritual or ritual purpose. The shape of its construction leads to the idea of being somehow associated with sexual activity. The fact that it was found in association with contraceptives lends credence to the idea of the idol being believed to somehow enhance the power of such items. However, since one of the subjects is living, therefore his presence is either an invocation or a mocking, while…"

Picard paused, winced at his own stupidity, and he asked, "The _woman_ is one being invoked, isn't she?"

Smiling wryly, Q replied, "That took longer than I had come to expect from you Picard, for shame."

Examining the idol once more, Picard said, "She has certain… ethereal qualities despite being cast from bronze. Could it be that she is the _dead _wife of an honoured warrior and her presence in the idol is meant to represent the undying love between them while also indicating that conception is impossible?"

Shrugging, Q replied, "It might be something like that, but your thinking is still so _limited_, seeing everything as if the culture that had made that statuette was less advanced socially than yours, despite the fact that they are clearly more advanced technologically."

"With all their barbarism and superstitious behaviour that makes it hard to believe. While the Federation has full freedom of religion and culture, these people wage war as if their gods had given them direct orders to do so…" Picard trailed off as Q's grin became wider.

"There are no gods!" Picard demanded.

"What about those with omnipotent, or near omnipotent in the case of some, power? What if they let others call upon them for aid, what if they gave orders to those that followed them? Would they not meet the traditional requirements of deities?" Q asked mockingly.

"Those beings are not true gods; they are just those with greater understanding of the universe abusing the power they have obtained. I have met such creatures before, including you Q, and to a one they are all charlatans and liars," Picard replied angrily.

Slapping his right hand to his chest, Q said mockingly, "You _wound _me Picard! To think that I thought so highly of you, relatively speaking of course, and you still do not see what is in front of you. Who said that they _lie_?"

Picard blinked, and then looked down at the copy of the inscription he had been studying before Q's arrival, and felt a chill pass over him. He now knew so much more about what they were facing.

"The powers of Chaos… the gods that these people worship… they were ordinary people up until recently, weren't they?" Picard asked.

"It is what the inscription said," Q replied with a shrug.

"Ordinary people suddenly imbued with incredible power from highly destructive and predatory beings," Picard continued.

"One more step _mon capitaine_," Q urged.

"And instead of preying upon the remnants of their people, they instead _help _them while making them equally predatory. They possess incredible powers and understanding of the universe, and they _share _it with their worshippers while commanding them to go forth and conquer. They are… they are _worse _than the Borg. Most every other time we have encountered an ascended race they have ignored us, but this sort of encounter…" Picard trailed off.

"They literally see you all as target practice, nothing more," Q stated. "If they want to, they can conquer the entire galaxy within a few centuries and make sure that they rule for the rest of eternity," Q stated grimly.

"How can we stop them?" Picard asked desperately.

"_We _can't. Even the Continuum does not wish to attack their gods directly, as while we might win on our turf they have demonstrated an ability to carry grudges capable of outlasting cosmoses. _You _however might be able to use your new insights in some surprising ways," Q replied.

"Oh and how will I use these insights trapped down here?" Picard asked irritably.

Q raised his hand and said, "You don't even need to worship me for this one."

He then snapped his fingers and both he and Picard disappeared in a flash.


	24. Lost

**Chapter Twenty-three: Lost**

"Where in the Warp are we?" Rong-Arya asked while unsteadily climbing back into her seat, the deck gravity pitched at an odd angle making it rather hard to move properly.

"Sensors indicate that we are no longer in the Warp," Lieutenant Xavier reported.

"Okay, then where are we, in general?" Rong-Arya asked somewhat irritably while examining the restraining harness for her chair. She had only managed to get it partially buckled up when they had made their violent transition to the Warp, so the clasp had torn free. A regular human would have been killed on impact after such a violent event, but as a daemonhost Rong-Arya wasn't even bruised.

"Unknown, the spin of the ship is preventing us from getting a clear look at the stars," Xavier replied.

"Well then stop the damn ship from spinning!" The captain snapped irately.

"Engines are in full shut down, and full reports have yet to come in from the engine room. Cold starting the Gellar field has also overloaded numerous systems, but circuit breakers are being reset and fuses are being replaced as we speak. The surge _did _overload a few systems before the circuits broke, hence the lovely blue smoke, but surge protectors protected all systems we can't easily replace," Striker reported.

"Estimated time to engine restart?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Optimistically? Half an hour. The fact that we're not being smeared into a fine paste by the spin means that the inertial compensators are still up and running, so damage was not _too _severe. Realistically though, we're looking at just sitting here doing damage control for hours, _days _if you want me to be pessimistic," Striker said.

Frowning, Rong-Arya said, "Keep me updated then."

* * *

"Would you look at the size of that frakker?" Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace said in a low whistle as she kept her Viper in guardian formation with the Raptor doing the bulk of the recon work on this mysterious ship that had appeared on in deep space three light seconds from the battered Colonial fleet.

"Laser range finding indicates that it's about 2.3 km from bow to stern, but whoever built it certainly isn't home anymore. It's making a rotation along its axis central about once every ten seconds, more than enough to pulp anyone unfortunate enough to be inside the majority of it. Surprised it hasn't ripped itself apart yet," Sharon 'Athena' Agathon reported.

"I'm kind of glad of that. The frakking thing looks… well, _evil _I suppose would be the best term," Starbuck noted as they flew beneath the enormous ship as it drifted through space.

"_Insane _is probably a better word for it. That thing on the front? It's a _ram_ _prow_ if I'm looking at it right and it has chunks of debris stuck to it meaning that it has been _used _recently," Athena replied.

"A _ram prow_? What the frak is this, a frakking _joke_?" Starbuck asked incredulously.

"If it's a joke it's the weirdest frakking one I have seen ever. I mean, some of these telemetry contacts don't make any sense. I'm reading things that are either fighter launch tubes or _gun ports_. And I'm thinking they're gun ports because the smallest things that actually look like guns are bigger than the main guns on the _Galactica_," Athena replied.

"Are you trying to tell me that this thing has frakking _point defence guns _bigger than our main guns?" Starbuck asked.

"Hey, I'm just reading off the telemetry here. Huh… looks like a may have found the main hangar," Athena said, growing quizzical towards the end.

"Can it hold the frakking _Galactica_?" Kara asked sarcastically.

"Actually, no. I think it has less hangar space than we do. I'm guessing it's not a dedicated carrier," Sharon replied.

"Think we can get anything useful out of it?" Starbuck asked.

"Maybe if we could get it to stop spinning, but otherwise its just going to drift here forever, with no one able to get inside without going squish," Athena said with a verbal shrug at the end.

"What about the toasters?" Starbuck asked.

"They'll go crunch then. If it has joints, the G-forces will take it apart. It's impossible for anything to survive for long in there," Sharon said confidently.

* * *

"Huh… Captain, at first I thought it was an anomaly in the antennas, but we are definitely being scanned with radar and range finding lasers," Xavier reported.

"Really?" Rong-Arya asked, perking up and going into full combat mode. "Hostile?"

Shrugging, Xavier said, "Hard to say, but the search patterns are fairly lazy and the energy output a touch low so I'm guessing it's a targeting system being used for survey. I could be wrong though."

"Lieutenant O'Hare, begin wide band radio hailing. Let's see if there is anyone to talk to out there," Rong-Arya commanded.

* * *

Athena looked at her telemetry display. She looked at it again. She double checked with her ECO, who was the one doing the scanning work directly. Finally she said, "That's frakking _impossible_."

"What?" Starbuck asked over the radio, which was picking up some interference.

"The ship is _trying to talk to us_," Sharon replied in astonishment and horror.

"I thought you said that was impossible!" Starbuck cried out.

"It is! It's spinning too fast for anything living or mechanical to still be functioning. Frak, the antennas broadcasting the signal should have been ripped off their mounts! But I'm picking up a frakking transmission," Athena cried out in frustration.

"What's it say?" Starbuck asked.

"I have no idea, its gibberish. Definitely a language, but not one I can make out," Athena said. "Here, let me contact _Galactica_, see if they want us to reply."

* * *

"Picking up radio transmission from one of the targets to a location beyond our current resolution in this spin," O'Hare reported. "Decryption protocol has already broken through their key… their computer technology would have been considered laughable back before Third Impact if that's what they call encryption."

"Contents?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Unknown language… possibly derived from Greek. Running it through the universal translator," O'Hare replied, grinning as he interfaced the computer with the best piece of technology they had taken from the Federation. Rule one of interstellar diplomacy: develop good guns before you develop fancy toys or the first guys you meet might take those toys from you instead of talking.

Listening in on the conversation for a moment, O'Hare said, "Looks like they're asking their superiors for what to do. Should we butt in?"

Rong-Arya considered for a moment before saying, "**Patch us in**."

O'Hare's grin nearly managed to equal his captain's.

* * *

Admiral Adama had been listening patiently to Athena going on about impossible ships, as if finding a monster bigger than a battlestar drifting and spinning in deep space wasn't impossible enough, but now she was saying that it had somehow started transmitting despite the fact that it should be impossible. Sighing patiently, he was about to ask if she had considered the possibility of automated systems when something impossible happened.

"**Attention unidentified vessel, please state your affiliation and purpose for approaching our ship,**" a deep voice, oddly affected by reverb asked over the channel.

Everyone on the bridge paused for a moment before Adama asked, "Unknown contact, this is a secure Colonial military channel. Please identify yourself and what you are doing on it."

"**We asked first, and this channel is not secure to us**," the voice replied, causing a thrill of fear to jump through everyone. The Cylons could crack their codes, but it took time. Time that that should not have been available.

"The channel was encrypted, and I don't care who you are, you had to have deliberately cracked into it," Adama countered.

"**Fine, so you have us. We are Captain Rong-Arya of the **_**Stiletto**_**, the ship you are currently examining. So now we ask again, who are you and what are you doing here?**" The voice said.

Adama did not recognize the name of the ship as it was in a foreign language, or at least he _thought _he didn't recognize it because he thought that he heard a word that sounded like 'stiletto', in which case it was the worst ship name ever if given to a monster like that.

"Captain, I am Admiral William Adama of the _Galactica _and the Colonial Fleet. As the duly appointed military leader of these people, it is my responsibility to know whether or not you constitute a threat to us," Adama stated.

"**Oh, we very much represent a threat to you, in the same way that a whale represents a threat to a minnow. Now, if you mean an **_**active **_**threat, well, that very much depends on whether or not you decide to start shooting at us,**" Rong-Arya replied.

Frowning, Adama said, "You'll find that I prefer to finish fights rather than start them."

"**We're **_**sure **_**you do**," Rong-Arya said somewhat derisively. "**Now, we might as well ask this, but do you know where exactly we are? And we mean star coordinate wise. We're a little lost.**"

"I would rather not disclose that information at this time," Adama retorted.

"**Fine. How about the way to Earth, if you've heard of it? That would help us orient ourselves enormously,**" Rong-Arya asked.

The bridge held its collective breath for a moment, hoping against hope for the next words to be all their dreams come true. Thinking very carefully, Adama asked, "Why do you want to know the way to Earth."

"**Its home,**" Rong-Arya said.

* * *

"Ow! The channel just exploded into shouting," O'Hare said while wincing at the input into his neural jacks.

"**I guess they were looking for Earth**," Rong-Arya said with a shrug.

* * *

Once Tigh managed to get the bridge crew to settle down with his cyclopean stare, Adama cleared his throat and said, "I will admit that we too are looking for Earth, but we don't actually know where it is."

Sighing, Rong-Arya said, "**So much for doing things the easy way then. We'll have to slow down our spin and orient by the stars before trying to get off a signal.**"

Frowning, Adama asked, "About that, my officers say that you should be spinning too fast to survive. How exactly are you doing that?"

"**The spin is only about 70-80 Gs in the worst places, easily compensated for,**" Rong-Arya replied.

"What do you mean 'compensated for'?" Adama asked.

"**As in we have inertial compensators that keep us all from going squish when we engage our main drives or go through manoeuvres**," Rong-Arya replied.

"You have this technology?" Adama inquired.

"**It's pretty fundamental. A ship can't pull 10,000 Gs without some form of inertial compensation. By the way, thanks for telling us you don't have that sort of thing,**" Rong-Arya said laconically.

Mentally smacking himself, Adama replied, "Thank you for telling us the acceleration specs of your ship."

"**Not bad, although just by looking at your fighters I think we can outrun your missiles from a dead start. Anyway, as a denizen of Earth, I suppose I should ask you why you are looking for it**," Rong-Arya replied.

"I do not want to disclose that information to you at this time," Adama replied.

"**Alright then. Oh, you might want to tell your people to stand clear, my conn officer just informed me that we can use our retros to slow down our rate of spin,**" Rong-Arya said. "**We will fire our engines in 60 of the units represented by the time between these two beeps**." There was then a set of two computer generated beeps one after the other.

"Athena, Starbuck, get away from that ship now," Adama ordered, and the two pilots rapidly agreed.

A few light seconds away the nose of _Stiletto _was consumed in blue white fire as one of the retro-thrusters fired counter to the direction of spin. To the _Galactica _it looked like the ship had just detonated a city-buster nuke right next to its bow.

"What was that?" Adama cried out.

"**Our engines… ah, **_**much **_**better. Hmmm… damn, we are **_**off course!**_" Rong-Arya commented.

"What?" Adama asked.

"**My navigation officer just ran an analysis of the stars against our catalogue, and we are on the wrong side of the galaxy from Earth. This'll take a day or two to sort out,**" Rong-Arya answered.

_The wrong side of the galaxy? Damn it!_

"**Hmmm… nice ship. You guys do good construction… for what you have to work with anyway. A bit battered though. The battle scars look nice, but you could definitely use some time in a dry-dock**," Rong-Arya commented out of the blue.

"You were scanning us," Adama asked while glaring at his own sensors officers, who all threw up their hands in confusion. They had not detected any active scanners.

"**A bit. Tell me admiral, how many refugees do you have aboard those ships?**" Rong-Arya asked.

"For the safety of my people I refuse to disclose such information," Adama replied firmly.

"**Oh. Well, I just asked because Earth is a little empty after a series of nasty incidents, so we could probably use the extra people, especially if you have knowledge of building, maintaining, and living aboard space-based objects**," Rong-Arya replied, before adding on, "**Oh, and so you know, I broadcast that last statement on an open civilian channel as well as this military one.**"

Adama blinked before he felt a touch of rage well within him. He demanded, "What are you trying to do?"

"**Sow a little chaos, that's all. Maybe now that the cat is out of the bag you'll be willing to talk a little more openly with me.**"

"What. Do. You. Want?" Adama hissed.

"**I want to learn things Admiral; it is what my original mission was about. So I want to know why you are the only warship, and a battered one at that, in a refugee convoy looking for Earth,**" Rong-Arya asked.

Glaring at the microphone as if he could cause the voice on the other end to spontaneously combust, Adama admitted, "A race of robots called the Cylons, who I presume you haven't heard about, attacked our worlds and killed billions. We're almost all that is left, with a few scattered survivors being enslaved by the Cylons."

"_**Interesting… **_**see, now that you've told me that, I, as a former refugee myself, will now offer to bring you back to Earth and personally eviscerate any Cylon that dares come near you. We won't come back for you, so it's a limited time offer, but I think it's a pretty good deal. We protect you, bring you to our home where we have plenty of living space and need more people, and generally everyone wins**," Rong-Arya offered.

Adama was taken aback by this sudden change in mood, but he quickly regained his footing and said, "That sounds very generous of you, but I hope you won't be offended if I have to pass such a decision off to the civilian government and point out that we don't really know you and we have reason to be paranoid."

"**Ha! It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you! Don't worry about it, we're not a group used to having people swoon over us right away… running screaming in abject terror, but we're really a bunch of softies under all the armour plating and spikes,**" Rong-Arya said, causing everyone on the bridge of the _Galactica_ to look a little worried.

"You're not helping to sell your case here," Adama pointed out.

"**Look, it's like this: the best way to win a fight is to never start it. If your enemies fear you so much that they wet their pants at the mere mention of your name, then it pays to have an 'evil' reputation. So in battle we're all about the dismemberment and blood drinking and decorating ourselves in the skulls and flayed skins of our enemies, but we're really quite nice to the conquered civilian populations. Imperialist as all **_**fuck**_**, but atomic wastelands don't aid the war effort the same way as functioning factories and a population who have noted a rise in their standard of living since conquest do. Of course, we don't **_**explain **_**it that way to most people because it takes a while and hampers our ability to scare people. You on the other hand, well; we want you to join us, so it behoves us to explain just what you're getting into. In this case it will probably be warm beds, plentiful food, open skies, and government sponsorship to sit back, relax, and have lots of kids. Seriously, that's the average life of a person on Earth. Oh sure, you have to work too, but it's not the life of a refugee, I can tell you that,**" Rong-Arya explained.

"You know, the last bit _almost _erased the first bit," Adama said in disgust.

"**Trust me, we're not **_**that**_** bad. Also, we get lots of neat abilities. For instance, these Cylons you speak of will be arriving in thirty seconds. Our main reactor will not be online for… several hours. This will get interesting**," Rong-Arya said somewhat smugly.


	25. Corruption

**Chapter Twenty-four: Corruption**

She sat comfortably in an advanced wheel chair with integrated monitoring equipment and IV lines, wrapped up snugly in warm blankets and a nurse at her side at all times. Under most circumstances this would be considered sumptuous treatment, but a tiny part of her mind noted that this was all to keep her controlled. That the chair was a cage as much as transport, the nurse a jailer as much as healer, and the chemicals in her blood chained her as well as healed her.

Unfortunately that little voice got smaller and smaller each day, not just as the pharmaceuticals wore away her will to resist, but as the desire to resist these people faded with all the things they did for her. They cared for her, honestly and truly, and it was hard to hate someone who did that. And hate was the only emotion she could use in warding against them.

Sure, they had been the ones who had _shot _her in the first place, but technically she supposed that she and… and… someone… had kind of attacked first. But once they had her in their captivity they had treated her fairly and given her excellent medical treatment, including the replacement of all the organs blown out of her abdomen by the bolter shell. They had explained everything they had done to her, even the psychological tricks they were using to subvert her will.

For example, her 'nurse' combined the modern medical term and the original term, a pun that had been somewhat lost on her until it had been explained. They had then explained that aside from the fact that it was fairly standard for female nurses to actually breastfeed patients, the act when combined with some of the pharmaceutical agents in her blood, some of them manufactured within the nurse's body, they would regress her mind into a more child-like state where it would be easier to shape her opinions.

They were such insidious bastards, but when she was half asleep on hypnotics and had a touch of hallucinogens in her blood and she was being held up against a warm bosom like a babe, it was really hard to think ill about her captors. Or to even feel that what was being done to her was a bad thing.

Or, as her nurse said while Vita was suckling away, "We learned our lessons quite well from those who came before. Machiavelli was _wrong_, it is better to be loved than feared. It is harder to make someone love you than fear you, but it is also harder to _break _those bonds. Chaos will shower you in gifts and love, and all we ask is that you love us back."

And as narcotic laced human milk flowed over her tongue, Vita found it hard to disagree. These Chaos people were sick, twisted psychopaths who got a kick out of dismembering their enemies, but they were also lovely, gentle people towards their friends and family. They were also perverted to the extreme and other such lovely things, but they expressed those sorts of things differently depending on who you were, so that patients got breast fed by large bosomed women and enemies in the midst of battle got… _tentacles_. That was all they had explained to her, smiling too broadly about it, letting her fill in the blanks.

Somehow, after getting to know them, she actually doubted it was as bad as the let on. They seemed to enjoy letting people think the worst of them so that they could pleasantly surprise them later.

For example, in most cultures, large numbers of heavily armed and armoured soldiers wearing _way _too many skulls invading a children's hospital would be cause for concern, but here it was a way to cheer up the patients.

Of course, the patients needed cheering up, considering how many of them were here. A few days ago, if she had counted the rise and fall of the sun properly, there had been a sudden massive influx of wounded and sick children to the hospital, something the nurses had been commenting on. Aside from the noise and crowding level suddenly jumping up, it had also affected Vita's treatment schedule, meaning that she was significantly more lucid than before.

Then again, they probably wanted her lucid for this demonstration. Those that safely could be moved had all been brought out to the bright, green, well maintained front lawn where a number of terrifying looking soldiers were waiting, along with a strange batch of other people. Set with her wheelchair to one side, Vita was afforded a front row seat and a good view of the crowd of children.

About half to two-thirds of them weren't actually human, although it was hard to tell with some of them because except for a few cosmetic differences they didn't look very alien. For some, it was just some pointed ears or funny looking foreheads, although there were also a large number of stranger children. That species seemed like humanoid birds/reptiles, with tough, leathery skin and a crest of feathers on the head instead of hair. They also seemed to be suffering from the most diverse collection of ailments, from broken bones to amputations to nasty looking diseases, where the others seemed to all be suffering from burns for the most part.

Once everyone was there, one of the doctors came forward and said, "Now I know you're all scared, it has been a trying time for most of you, especially the last few days since you were transferred here. Many of you want to know where your parents are, and we are trying to get into contact with them if possible, but that is rather difficult at the moment. So for today we've decided to put on a little show for you to let you all know what you can expect in the future. Call it a 'career day' if you will, as some of you are already reaching the age where you will start making decisions about your life."

Glancing over, the doctor gestured for a semi-familiar face to step forward. It was one of the men often seen patrolling the grounds, a formidable young man with an extensive network of scars across his face, dressed in gear that would be better suited to quelling a riot with extreme prejudice than patrolling the grounds of a children's hospital, but that was just how Chaos ran: overkill was not just a word, it was a way of life.

"Hey kids! My name is Officer Bradley, and you might have seen me making sure no bad people try and get in here. What you might _not _know however is that I'm not just a guard here, I'm actually a police officer and in the army reserves. Now, a lot of you are new here, so you might have been hearing all sorts of rumours about the army, and the military in general. Well, I'm here to dispel them and set the record straight. You are _not_, repeat, _not _required to join the army. That is volunteer only. As a citizen, what you _are _required to do is be part of the reserves. Now, some of you might be asking what that means. Being part of the reserves means is that you are taught how to help the regular army if we ever need to defend our homes. Isn't that great?" Officer Bradley explained to the kids.

It was interesting seeing the reactions among the children. Some responded with fear and trepidation, while others nodded sagely or even looked eager, and it seemed to be mostly divided along species, and thus most likely cultural, lines. One girl held up her hand and asked, "What about girls? I hear that they don't have to go into the reserves."

Just by her attitude alone Vita could tell that she was local. Most of the other humans were still cowering from the whole affair.

Chuckling, Officer Bradley replied, "Well little lady, that's depends on what exactly you want to do with your life. The gods have mandated a large population increase, so any woman who has three or more children by her twentieth birthday can opt not to join the reserves to instead concentrate on raising her kids."

"Does that make us 'walking baby making machines beholden to a husband'?" The girl asked, obviously quoting an adult at the end there.

Laughing, Bradley said, "Well now maybe I should pass it over to Sister Roxanne here."

Taking a step back, Bradley let a woman take centre stage, one who was decked out in a wide degree of religious iconography and carrying a very large sword strapped to her back. Smiling, she said, "As the good officer said, I am Sister Roxanne, a priestess to the Female Trinity, and I was asked to come here to dispel any misgivings the girls in the audience might have about their futures. The gods _ask _that we be fruitful and multiply, and they back up their request with many tax breaks and social programs for women who have large families, but they do not _force _pregnancy and marriage upon women. Three of the four gods are female, and they would not tolerate a male dominated society like that. If they so choose, women like me can become leaders, both spiritual and material, or technicians or engineers or soldiers or any of the careers a man can do. Yes, it's a little bit harder than if you take a more traditional path, but then again, _men _don't have to join the reserves either if they wish to pursue a few of the special careers open to both sexes."

A smallish man with glasses and extensive cybernetic work coughed lightly in the back. Turning, Roxanne offered the stage to him, and he stepped forward. Grinning broadly at the crowd of children, the man said, "I guess this makes it a good time to step in. My name is Dr. Walberg, although I'm not a medical doctor like the fine ladies and gentlemen that are taking care of you here. No children, I'm a researcher who uses knowledge of the universe, either granted directly by the gods or obtained through experimentation, to help create a new and better tomorrow. In the past twenty-five years since Third Impact we have made incredible strides forward in all areas of science and technology. Improvements in surgery and cybernetics are what will make sure that many of you will be able to run and play with your friends instead of being crippled for life. Extensive factory and farm automation is what will allows so many to live lives of luxury, pursuing arts and even greater sciences for the glory of the gods. Of course, getting the doctor title takes a great deal of work, and in their wisdom, the gods grant any who wish to pursue such schooling a reprieve from serving in the reserves or starting a family. Not all people who take up such paths will make it, but they are not punished, just asked to pick a new path for their life."

One of the alien children finally had the temerity to raise a hand, and Dr. Walberg immediately acknowledged him. Stuttering a bit, the feathered boy asked, "What of us who are new to the might of your gods and magic?"

Grinning, Dr. Walberg said, "You will of course be caught up as best you can, and allowed to choose your path in life as if you were any other citizen. We need all the people we can get, be they human, penguin, or…" Pausing, Dr. Walberg looked over to one of the doctors, who whispered something in his ear. Continuing, the scientist said, "Or Syracusan. Although I should note that _most _of what we do isn't magic."

"That would be where I should step in," said one of the large, armoured men in the back. Bowing out, Dr. Walberg let the blue and gold giant step forward for his turn.

"Now as I understand it, some of you might have already seen some of my brothers, so I understand if you are scared by my appearance, but you really have nothing to fear. I am a Space Marine, favoured of the gods, and some of their highest, most sacred laws forbid the harming of children. No, you should know that I or any of my brothers, from any of the chapters would gladly die to protect you. That out of the way, I was asked to come here to speak not just for the Heralds of Tzintchi, but for psykers in general. Psychic powers are one of the crown jewels for humanity since the ascension of the gods, and those of you who demonstrate a capacity with such things will be greatly rewarded in whatever career you follow, for while the training to control your powers is more difficult, the benefits speak for themselves," the marine said before casually flicking out a hand and causing a sword lunge aimed at the back of his head to stop dead. "Precognition and telekinesis are but two of the many benefits. In the case of the Heralds of Tzintchi, our psychic powers grow to the point where… well…"

The Herald then let the telekinesis holding the other Marine back drop, causing the sword to plunge through his helmet, emerging out the other side. There were numerous cries of fear from the assembled children, but the Herald just held up a hand and said, "Don't worry kids, I'm _alright_."

This actually caused a segment of the audience to start crying more.

Sliding his sword out of the Herald's head, the man who did it said, "Don't fear children. That was just a show, so you could see what Tzintchi's might can do. Brother, if you would remove your helmet?"

Removing his helmet, the Herald allowed everyone to see what was beneath his armour. Or rather, what _wasn't_. Instead of flesh and blood, there was a collection of faintly glowing sand assembled into a shifting facsimile of a human head. The marine with the sword passed his weapon through the Herald's head a few times to show that it did no damage.

Sheathing his weapon, the marine said, "That was just a demonstration of some of the things the Heralds of Tzintchi are capable of. Vast psychic power and physical immortality are but a few of the abilities they gain. However, if you are a human male, sorry aliens and girls, it has to do with simple genetics, and you think you are good enough to challenge the entry tests for the Marines, there are other chapters to consider. As a member of the Sons of Kensuke, I represent the 'armoured fist' of the marine chapters. Our Primarch has long sought to ensure that we acquire the best equipment, and by far we have the most armoured vehicles around. Tanks, skimmers, gunships, you name it, we've got it. Our personal forges were in fact the ones that designed the World Raider assault tank, which I understand saw use by Primarch Toji in the Defence of Bloodhaven. So if you are interested in getting to use the best, most powerful tanks available in the service of the gods, the Sons of Kensuke are the ones to talk to."

Stepping aside, the Son of Kensuke allowed a garishly decorated marine carrying what looked like a cross between a chainsaw and a guitar with enormous amplifiers on his shoulders to step forward. His helmet off, the children could see the broad grin permanently carved into the marine's face. Looking over the crowd, the marine asked, "How many of you here like to have fun?" The marine waited for a few in the audience to timidly raise their hand before saying, "Well, in the Whips of Mislaato, we have fun all the time. Every day is a party, even when fighting… actually, _especially _when fighting, because we've figured out how to turn music into a weapon, so every fight _rocks!_ Not only that, but how many of you wish you weren't hurt? A lot I bet. Well, Mislaato teaches us how to turn pain into pleasure. For a Whip of Mislaato, getting scratched is like being tickled! Doesn't that sound great? Actually, doesn't _this _sound great?"

The Whip then began to work on the guitar, producing an impressively fast and complex number that quickly had all of the kids watching in rapt awe as he worked his armoured fingers up and down the massive guitar, producing a song of inhuman power and emotion before he turned to the group behind him and hit a power chord that caused one of the other marines to more or less explode, causing all of the children to squeal in fear.

Picking himself up off the ground, the marine so struck said, "I'm okay! I'm okay!" This time, unlike when the Herald took the sword through the head, there was actually a smattering of applause. The kids were starting to get into the show, starting to understand that no one was going to get hurt.

The marine who was downed by the Whip looked like a complete and utter mess, like he had been shot repeatedly and then left in a septic tank for a month, certainly not the sort of guy to be let near a children's hospital, but the doctors were utterly unconcerned by his unsanitary appearance. Clearing his throat of some serious phlegm build up, the marine said, "For a Bearer of Reigle, wounds like that don't hurt at all, and they don't slow us down. Reigle's gifts are many, and she above all of the other gods will love you no matter what you do. The world is changing rapidly, as many of you know far too well, and some people can't keep up with that much change."

The Herald of Tzintchi coughed smugly.

Making a small, annoyed hum, the Bearer continued, "But if you ever feel like you're falling behind, don't fret, for Reigle will be there to catch you when you fall. Not only that, but as a follower of Reigle, especially as a Bearer, you will be helping out everyone on the planet. Reigle controls all of the disease on this world, and so long as she has followers who can serve as repositories of all the sickness in the world, no one else has to get sick. _Ever._ Isn't that amazing kids? For those of you born off world, that means that you and those you love will never catch a cold or get cancer or suffer from a plague as long as Reigle is around… unless of course you choose to follow her, in which case you will not suffer or die for all the little things you carry in her name. Their life will become your life, and visa versa. It's great!"

Another marine shoved a chainsword through the Bearer's gut and activated it, sending rotting meat flying everywhere, but the Bearer just gave the thumbs up and said, "No pain! Don't try this at home of course, but if you join the Bearers, or Reigle in general, this sort of thing isn't even that inconveniencing."

Taking his sword out the Bearer, the marine flicked it clean before giving the Bearer a high five and taking his turn at centre stage. "Hey kids! I'm a Son of Toji, the do everything chapter. Unlike all of the other chapters, we emphasize elite, physical prowess in all things. So where our fellow First Founding chapter the Sons of Kensuke like to drive around in tanks a lot, we prefer to just _run _as fast as tanks. We might not be as tough as the Bearers, as psychic as the Heralds, as quick as the Whips, or as ferocious as the Reavers, but we also have none of their weaknesses. We can run, we can jump, we can shoot, and we can most _definitely _score, where the other chapters might only be able to do one or two of those things really well but not the others very good. For example, the Bearers and the Heralds are both really slow; the Whips are by far the most fragile chapter-"

"Says you," the representative from the Whips interrupted, sticking out his tongue, which got a few smattered giggles from the kids.

"…And the Reavers are the worst long distance shots in existence," the Son of Toji finished.

"Who needs long distance accuracy when you can close with the enemy faster than Tzintchi did against Ramiel?" The final marine to speak, decked out in red and bronze armour and wielding a massive chainsaw axe, said. The Son of Toji gestured, and the man shrugged before coming forward.

"I am a Reaver of Asukhon, as some of you who know the chapters might have already guessed. That means that I am very, _very _angry. All the time. No exceptions. Even now I am furious; although I should note that I am not angry at any of you, so don't be scared. No, I look out at you, and I see the wounds on you, and I want to fly into frenzy. Kids should not suffer plasma burns. Kids should not be in hospitals. Kids should be out and about playing in the sunshine with their friends and family. When I see you, it makes me want to beg the gods for a chance to go back through the portal and start tearing apart Borg until there are none left. _That _is what it means to be a Reaver of Asukhon."

The Whip snorted in disbelief.

"Okay. Being a Reaver also means that we have to get creative with the psychic powers that keep popping up in our ranks despite having very little to do with them. We do things like _this_," the Reaver then vanished with the sound of air imploding inward to fill the vacancy left behind before reappearing next to the Whip and punching the marine in the face, then leaping impossibly through the air in defiance of gravity to land next to the Herald and try to head butt the psychic in the face, only to get a wave of telekinesis for his trouble.

Very quickly it all descended into a brawl between the various marines, each apparently trying in earnest to kill the others, but as the children watched it soon became obvious that it was all one big play fight as no one ever got hit by any weapons unless they could take it like the Herald or the Bearer, and even then those two only got hit in non-essential areas.

After a few spectacular minutes of whirring saws, humming blades, teleportation, flipping, jumping, and really good if destructive music that left everyone in awe, all of the marines spontaneously turned such that they were all in a line and bowed, eliciting cheers and applause from the audience.

They had made their sale. Now every little boy would want to be a Space Marine when he grew up, and everyone was now thinking about how they wanted to worship the gods. Tzintchi with his psychic powers, Mislaato with her fun loving attitude, Reigle with her self sacrificing endurance, Asukhon with her righteous wrath, or some mixture of the four.

As Vita was wheeled back to her private room, she could not help but be impressed by how comprehensive their society was. Everyone had their place, had a path to follow, and everything worked. It might be some sort of twisted version of a regular society, but it _worked_. It might be called Chaos, but while individual members were allowed freedom overall it was very orderly.

"Wasn't that a nice presentation Vita?" The nurse taking care of her asked.

"Nice," Vita said groggily, the chemicals in her blood keeping her from saying much else. She then added on rather sadly, "Too bad it doesn't matter to me."

"Oh now, just because you opposed us at one point doesn't mean you can't become a citizen and enjoy all the rights and benefits as well as bear the responsibilities that come with such a lofty position," the nurse said reassuringly.

"No. I mean grow up. I'm stuck like this… forever," Vita said morosely.

"Oh. You mean that weird stasis effect, the one that let you live through getting shot in the gut with a bolter. The gods are suppressing it right now, so you will indeed grow up," the nurse said happily.

"_What?_" Vita cried out, trying to stand up but finding that her muscles and bones had not knit enough to allow her such freedom of action.

"You're going to grow up Vita. I don't know how long you've been in a body that young, but already you're aging. In a few years you'll be an adult, able to do all of the things adults do," the nurse explained.

Vita fainted, partially from shock, but mostly because her system was so doped up she did not have the strength to stay conscious after such a world shaking revelation.

This changed _everything_.


	26. Irritation

**Chapter Twenty-five: Irritation**

Petty Officer First Class Topher Walker of the _Stiletto_ was a simple man of simple tastes. He liked his booze either straight from the bottle, or if he was feeling fancy, straight from the nipple. He enjoyed hot pizza and hotter women. He knew that professional wrestling was "real". And he felt that devotion to the gods had its place, but that they were probably busy scheming to conquer the cosmos, so they wouldn't have much time for a guy like him, so he rarely bothered them with prayer.

_Today _however he was letting loose the kind of invocations to the gods that they were bound to hear. For one, the volume of such was great enough to reach across the void of interdimensional space.

"_BY ALL OF THE GODS MOVE YOU PIG-FUCKING SPAWN OF A QUADRUPLE AMPUTEE AND A SYPHILITIC WHORE!_" PO Walker screamed while trying to turn a damaged bolt on the casing of one of the ship's torpedoes. The rest of his work crew stood back in mute terror as their chief looked ready to have a stroke or to begin bashing in the casing of the two gigaton warhead they were trying to _disarm_.

Glancing back at them, Topher screamed, "_WHAT ARE YOU CHUCKLE FUCKS DOING FUCKING ABOUT BACK THERE? COME OVER HERE AND HELP ME WITH THIS BITCH OR BY FUCKING ASUKHON I WILL RIP YOUR FUCKING HEADS OFF, SHIT DOWN YOUR NECKS, AND THEN USE WHAT LITTLE BRAINS YOU HAVE FOR LUBE WHEN I TRACK DOWN AND FUCK YOUR MOTHERS UP THE ASS!_"

The entire ship then rocked slightly, causing everyone to sway about. Topher immediately cried out, "_WHAT THE _FUCK _WAS THAT? I SWEAR TO FUCKING TZINTCHI, IF THEY'RE FIRING THE ENGINES WITHOUT TELLING ME I WILL MARCH UP TO THE BRIDGE AND FUCK THEM SIDEWAYS WITH MY SPANNER!_"

The ship rocked again in quick succession, causing Topher to point to two of his team and order, "_YOU TWO, YEAH, YOU TWO! ONE OF YOU GO UP THERE AND FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS FUCKING TURBULENCE IS, WHILE THE OTHER I WANT TO GET A PLASMA CUTTER. THIS BOLT IS COMING OFF ONE WAY OR ANOTHER! THE REST OF YOU FUCKERS, COME OVER HERE AND HELP ME WITH THIS SHIT FUCKER!_"

The two men who got to scurry out of the jammed torpedo tube were just glad that they could get away from the apocalyptic shouting of the pissed off petty officer.

* * *

"They're shooting _what _at us?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Looks like thermonuclear weapons. We didn't even notice the first few, they were so low in yield, but once they noticed that they were completely and utterly failing to hurt us they started throwing megaton level ordinance at us," Ichiro-Faust elaborated.

"Damn it! The Borg already messed up some of the more delicate instruments with that stunt they pulled back at Damocles. I do not need even more paint added to our expense reports. And did the hangar doors at least get closed?" Rong-Arya asked in annoyance.

"That was the first thing we did once we had power there. They should have closed before transit into the Warp, but you know the circumstances of _that _incident," Ichiro-Faust groused.

"Yeesh, anything else?" Rong-Arya asked in irritation.

"Uh… well, they _tried _to hack into our computers, but aside from the fact that the communications gear is physically isolated from the rest of the systems, our reactive firewalls and offensive counter viral system seems to have given them… huh… wow," O'Hare noted before he shrugged and looked at Ichiro-Faust for confirmation.

"What _happened_?" Rong-Arya asked with an annoyed tone.

"Uh… one of the enemy ships appears to have detonated all of its nuclear weapons in their tubes, destroying it, while coordination between enemy elements has just dropped by about seventy percent. I guess they were highly networked and not prepared for this level of electronic warfare," Ichiro-Faust said with a shrug.

Rong-Arya blinked a few times before she said, "This is a _frigate! _Not an electronic warfare cruiser, we shouldn't be able to _do _that!"

Shrugging, O'Hare said, "I don't know! The comm. gear practically has the word 'Norton' on its anti-virus software; it doesn't even have a single daemon working on it. I mean, yeah, the virus is a polymorphic, adaptive, pseudo-intelligent algorithm, but unless these guys are running the _slowest _processors I have ever seen for a space-faring race even the Federation with its crappy computer security should be able to simply out process such a simple virus."

"They _are _shooting nukes at us," Ichiro-Faust pointed out.

"Their acceleration profiles suggests minimal to no inertial compensation as well," Xavier added in.

Holding their forehead in frustration, Rong-Arya said, "So we're fighting guys who have weapons that have no chance in hell of _denting _our armour, to say nothing of making our shields flicker once we get them up, and whose computer science is probably a couple of centuries, if not millennia, behind our own admittedly accelerated knowledge. This is worse than fighting the Federation. At least with them we could _pretend _that they were a threat. Tell me, please, that at least these guys have _shields_."

Xavier shook his head sadly.

"For the love of! All right, is there _any way _they could at all threaten us?" Rong-Arya asked.

Looking over his display, Ichiro-Faust vacillated on saying something for a time before he shrugged and said, "_Well… _I suppose some of these contacts might be boarding ships, but they can't actually penetrate our hull, so it's kind of a moot point."

Frowning, Rong-Arya finally said, "Oh _fuck it_. Get the transports into their storm shelters and open the hangar doors. **I want to find out if these Cylons have souls.**"

Getting up out of their command chair, the daemonhost unsheathed their most prized possession, a daemon weapon capable of ripping the soul out of anyone it ran through. The tortured faces of several Borg drones still swirled about the surface, their essence having yet to be consumed by the creature bound within the surface of the sword.

Today was not a good day to be a Cylon.

* * *

The crew of the _Galactica _looked on in stunned awe as more firepower than had been used in the genocide was hurled at the giant ship… and failed to do anything to it. They kept having to check that their sensors were working properly, because they were seeing megaton level nuclear weapons make hull contact before detonation and the ship was not perturbed in the slightest.

Also, one of the Cylon Basestars had inexplicably exploded, which had left everyone scratching their heads at that.

"Can you still raise them on the radio?" Adama asked in a hushed voice.

"Hailing now," the communications officer said.

After a slight delay due to the propagation speed of light, a voice over the radio said, "This is communications officer Lieutenant O'Hare of the _Stiletto_. You are hailing us _Galactica_?"

"Uh… yes… we just wanted to see if you were still alive over there after all of those fireworks," Adama admitted.

There was a slight crackle as another city killer weapon went off, to which O'Hare responded, "We're just fine over here. A little irritated, but otherwise alright."

"_Irritated_?" Adama asked in incredulous shock. "You're getting frakking pummelled with thermonuclear weapons."

"Yeah, well, the last guys we fought had terawatt lasers, antimatter warheads, atomic breakdown beams, and some weird shit that distorted space and time in a strange manner, and all they managed to was get us lost, so don't worry about us," O'Hare said dismissively.

Adama would have called bullshit to anyone else, but considering that he had _seen _the frakking ship take city killer missiles, he wasn't about to argue. Instead he asked, "Okay then… incidentally where is your captain, lieutenant?"

"Oh that. We saw a bunch of boarding ships incoming so she decided to open the hangar doors and confront them. I can pass you on to our tactical officer, he's the current ranking officer on the bridge, or send a message to the captain if you want to speak to her directly," O'Hare replied.

Adama blinked once. He blinked twice. Then he said, "_What?_"

"Well, thing is that these Cylons have no actual way to _hurt _us, and the captain has some frustrations to work out, so she drew her sword and went down there to vent. So do you have a message for her or would you like to just sit here and chat for a while. I really have nothing better to do at the moment so I wouldn't mind the conversation," O'Hare said.

"You're in _battle _lieutenant," Adama said, the professional soldier in him disgusted by the casual attitude.

"Actually, we haven't even sounded general quarters; we've just announced radiation warnings and recommended that people stay off the outer hull, so technically we're not in a battle," O'Hare replied.

"What is _wrong _with you people?" Adama asked.

There was a short pause from O'Hare before the lieutenant replied, "Well, depending on how you want to track it, we're somewhere between tens of thousands to _millions _of years more advanced than you guys, so your weapons are like popguns to us, thus a certain amount of laxity in the situation is to be expected. I mean, seriously, we don't even have _power _to half our main systems and you could shoot at us all day and it wouldn't matter."

"That kind of attitude leads to you getting bit in the ass," Adama growled.

"That statement implies that you have teeth capable of penetrating our ass. This match up is like… like well a sea bass in a poorly constructed wooden barrel versus a main battle tank. The bass isn't even a threat to the guys inside the tank, let alone the tank itself," O'Hare said nonchalantly.

"That's insanely arrogant," Adama said.

"That's reality," O'Hare replied.

* * *

"…and _that _gentlemen, is how you can get a stubborn detonator out of a damaged Mk. VII anti-ship torpedo just using a little spit and elbow grease and a few strikes from a spanner," PO Walker said, holding up the now badly mangled detonation mechanism to his wide eyed crew.

"Now that the detonator has been safely removed, we can drain the warhead's fuel tanks without risking initiation, and then break out the meltas and free up the parts fused to the launch tube so we can take this entire bitch out. Shouldn't take more than half an hour if we put our backs into it," Topher said with a smile.

Up above a man popped his head into the jammed tube and said, "Hey PO, the LT says that we've got power back to the lifts, so if you've got your tube cleared, he wants a fresh one in the pipe ASAP."

"Damn it man, we can get it cleared right quick, but the tube is still damaged," Topher said.

The messenger just shrugged and said, "Port tube won't be fixed until we get back to dry dock, and the torpedoes have internal power systems so we can fire them at minimal power."

Grumbling while his men worked to drain the warhead of its fuel, PO Walker said, "Yeah, well that is what you get when you improperly fuse these things to deal with ships lacking void shields. Disabling the terminal approach of the fuse means that these things are hot the moment they leave the tubes."

"Incidentally, we're apparently fighting guys who don't have shields, period, so we're going to need the torpedoes fused like the last battle," the messenger said before ducking out.

"_WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY? DID I NOT JUST SAY THAT WE WERE IN THIS FUCKING SITUATION BECAUSE OF THAT SHIT YOU LITTLE FUCKWAD! _FUCK!" Topher screamed out while waving his spanner in the general direction of the retreating man.

* * *

The Cylons were… _confused_. They had heard a great warning against a new ship that had appeared, one who's very presence was offensive to God, and that they needed everything they could to deal with it. Occupation fleets and even defensive fleets for their own worlds had been called away, such that more and more ships were arriving every moment, but so far the blasphemy had yet to respond to their presence in a meaningful way.

Even when they had nuked it.

So far, the only response had been a hacking that had managed to reprogram the nuclear weapons in one of the Basestars into thinking that they had just made contact, causing them to initiate and destroy the ship. But there had been no follow up attempts though, indicating to some that perhaps the attack had been _accidental_.

Still, for most of the Cylons, they had orders to destroy the strange, gargantuan ship at all costs, even if it meant ignoring the hated _Galactica_. Only the bio-Cylons had the free will to question such things, and none of them were on the boarding ships that would hopefully do what nuclear weapons had not.

The Centurions aboard the transports had not the initiative to wonder why the hangar doors had opened for them in between launching from their Basestars and their arrival at the ship. Nor did they question why such an obvious weak point was undefended. They simply disembarked, weapons at the ready, while Raiders remained in station keeping formations just outside the hangar doors.

The only thing that could be said to have worried the Centurions was the fact that their tactical subroutines were warning that this had a high probability of being a trap. Still, as their numbers swelled into the thousands and they continued to secure the hangar, they wondered if the trap would ever be sprung.

Then they opened the first door to the inside of the ship.

The air lock was filled with a fluid the colour of rotten bile, and upon contact with the Centurions that had opened the door the unfortunate robots immediately began to run away in fear and pain, two things that had been programmed into them _at that moment _by the contagions that contacted them. The tiniest droplet that came in contact with their metal frames was enough to cause death as rusting corruption quickly spread, consuming and destroying them.

Of course, by running in a panic they spread the fluid about, causing dozens more Centurions to be infected. As the fiftieth soldier was contaminated, the order was given to execute those already infected before they could spread the metal eating disease further.

The order to cease fire was given a second after the order to fire, for the bullets veered off on impossible vectors, time and space warping within the confines of the hangar bay so that instead of putting down the infected Centurions, they instead returned to the Cylons that had fired, ripping them to shreds.

At about that time the hangar bay doors abruptly slammed shut, sealing several thousand Centurions inside. The Raider immediately opened fire, but their shots just flattened harmlessly or ricocheted dangerously back at them.

Inside the hangar atmosphere was returned and airlocks began to open to release the anti-boarding crews, lead by an extremely annoyed Captain Arya-Rong. The Centurions opened fire, but again space warped to ensure that none of their bullets went where they were supposed to. Some of them noted that this effect was probably why the humans were carrying melee weapons.

And then the repulsion team struck the robots and the metal started flying.

Despite being organics, the humans were unnaturally strong and tough, their mono-edged axes and swords more than capable of cleaving through Centurion armour with contemptible ease. Worse yet, there was one human female that appeared to be _on fire _with no ill effects who was mowing through Centurions single handed, and worst of all, aboard the Resurrection Ship the memories from those slain by her were refusing to show up. It was as if anyone she killed was simply… erased.

The battle was over far, _far _too quickly for the Cylons liking, and while things did not entirely go the way of the enemy, full auto fire at ranges of less than a metre could still hit the psychopathic brutes, the fact of the matter was that the Cylons were in over their heads in the worst way possible.

* * *

Sitting back down in her chair on the bridge, Rong-Arya brushed a lock of hair out of their face and said cheerfully, "Well that was refreshing. Did anything interesting happen while I was away?"

All the bridge officers shrugged dismissively. Ichiro-Faust said, "The starboard torpedo tube has been cleared and is being readied for firing as we speak."

"Oh? Excellent. Which ship do you think we should target?" Rong-Arya asked.

"There are three ships hanging well back from the main formation that seem to be major communications hubs for the others, so I would guess that they are command ships," Lieutenant O'Hare pointed out.

Looking at the data, Ichiro-Faust said, "If we target the central ship we should be able to catch one or both of the other ships in the explosion."

"Very well then, let's do that. How long until the rest of our weapons are operational?" Rong-Arya asked.

"We can probably get some of the fusion batteries online in an hour or so," Ichiro-Faust replied.

"Eh… if they don't scatter after this I guess we'll just have to wait an hour to finish them off," Rong-Arya said with a shrug. "Do we have a targeting solution?"

"We do. This will also please the crew techs down there as an optimal detonation requires the activation of the terminal phase in the torpedo," Ichiro-Faust reported.

"Good. Also, point of note, we need to work out a way to properly fuse the torpedoes against enemies where the terminal phase is unnecessary," Rong-Arya said before saying dismissively, "Fire."

* * *

To the Cylon and Colonial sensors, the _Stiletto _launched a single missile the size of a small office building, and then two of the three Resurrection Ships they had brought along to service the armada of Basestars and Raiders vanished in an impossibly huge ball of white plasma a few seconds later.

This was for the simple fact that their sensors relied upon electromagnetic radiation and assumed that any physical object they encountered would not be moving close to the speed of light. Unfortunately for them, the plasma torpedo accelerated to 0.8c in approximately three seconds, crossing the ten light seconds that separated the _Stiletto _from its target in approximately fifteen seconds. This meant that for almost the entirety of its flight any signals bounced off the torpedo returned either red or blue shifted, and more significantly, the torpedo passed through sweep regions faster than the sensors could mechanically track.

Only in the last second before the volatile plasma warhead detonated did it slow down to the point where it could be tracked, although this involved firing its engine hard enough that the backwash obliterated the majority of its target so even then the Cylons never really knew what hit them before two gigatons of terrible light and heat swept over their ships, flashing thousands of minds into vapour in an instant.

A single shot had just killed more Cylons than any other event in the war, and it had slipped past a good twenty Basestars to do so.

The ship they faced could shrug off thermonuclear warheads like rain, was filled with organics stronger than Centurions, and could one shot two of their most protected ships with contemptuous ease. This truly _was _a demon ship.

The Cylons broke and ran. They had _nothing _that they could throw against this monster right now.

* * *

Adama was speechless. He had been moving the _Galactica _well away from the _Stiletto _since the Cylons appeared and thanking the gods that they did not seem interested in his people, but then right before he had given the order to jump away from the monster fleet assembling the ship had gone and done something like _that_.

There was only one thing to do right now.

"Call up the _Stiletto _again. Let's see if that offer to follow them is still good," Adama said, swallowing his pride.


	27. Guest

**Chapter Twenty-six: Guest**

There were two kinds of daemon bound to physical objects under the new system of Chaos. The first and most common were made from the souls of those who pissed off the gods but not quite enough to warrant getting sent to the Hall of Torment, guys like child abusers and the like. They were turned into very minor entities and stuck into things like swords and such, the idea being that spending a couple of centuries as an inanimate object would get them to shape up, and if they didn't, well at least they were well away from other souls and doing something semi-useful.

Then there were the few souls who volunteered to get the process done to them. It was pretty rare that there were positions open, but with the commissioning of the _Stiletto _there were a variety of places where a person looking for a shot at immortality could find work. For Lars, being turned into an incorporeal entity and stuffed into a communications mast for a few hundred years beat out being eaten by the gods upon his death.

That was of course until his perch had been shorn off the _Stiletto _and he had been sucked into a Warp rift and hurled across the multiverse.

Fortunately for him, since he had _volunteered _he had actually been given a healthy measure of knowledge about what it meant to be a daemon and thus how to survive on his own. All of the prisoner daemons would dissipate once their container was destroyed, but for Lars, he still had a chance to get back home.

If he could figure out where home was. He had hit the Warp pretty hard and his mast had bounced across the multiverse for quite a while until it had hit something that finally disintegrated the material component and sent him tumbling out into the Warp. Unfortunately, while the analogy was a bit crude, the reason he hadn't jumped from the mast in the first place was that he had been moving very 'fast' through the Immaterium and he could have easily been ripped apart by the shock.

Thus when he finally did exit that which he had been bound to, it was less like a fighter pilot ejecting from a damaged aircraft and more along the lines of a guy being thrown through a windshield from his disintegrating Ferrari in a three hundred kilometre per hour roll over.

Thus when Lars came to a rest in a plane of existence, he was in a considerable amount of pain and soon blacked out. Considering that he didn't exactly have a body properly capable of feeling pain or with the biological capacity to pass out, this indicated just how battered he was on a fundamental level.

When Lars had managed to put the battered chunks of his essence back into proper alignment and consciousness returned to him, he discovered that he had assumed a corporeal form, one based on his old, mortal body. This worried him a bit at first, but he had been warned that in some realms such things were possible, and it didn't seem likely that he was going to dissipate any time soon.

It was also obvious that wherever he had ended up, someone had been taking care of him as he was in a room, lying on a futon on the floor, with a set of clothing set aside for him. Getting up, he considered the clothing for a moment. They looked to be from a reasonably advanced culture, although they were perhaps a bit too small for him. Then again he was in an unknown universe and he wasn't about to forget the first rule of survival.

_There are some places where there are beings that can squash a daemon like a bug. If you find yourself in an unknown place, assume there are such beings about and thus _be polite. _Be polite to a fault. Do not engage in senseless acts of violence. Do not give any excuse to any deific being to try and kill you and then find out where you came from. You are a guest, so act like one._

Lars really, _really _hoped that he was in a nice, peaceful place with few gods so that he could just start looking for home instead of having to explain that no, he wasn't in fact the vanguard for a daemonic invasion, but considering his luck that seemed unlikely at this point.

Slipping on the clothing, he found that it was a little too small, but fortunately just in the height department and not in any way that would pinch uncomfortably. True, such concerns were ultimately meaningless, but it could still be annoying.

Taking in his surroundings, he quickly ascertained that he was probably somewhere in Japan. Somehow Earth and its cultures could be copied endlessly throughout the cosmos, but no one really knew _why._ Then again, the gods seemed interested in human cultures because they were easier to work with, so humanity's cradle showing up repeatedly was not too much of a stretch if you considered that they were actively looking for it. Still, finding a copy randomly seemed… strange.

Sliding the door to his room open, he glanced about the hallway and found no one around. He said in a soft by audible voice, "Hello? Is anyone home? It's me, the strange naked guy you found and took in. I'm up."

Hearing no reply, Lars stepped out into the hall and cracked open one of the sliding doors to see if it led outside, to a main living area, or just to another room. He quickly closed it again, as it was definitely a room, apparently the living space of an apothecary or something judging by the large array of cabinets filled with bottles and boxes and the presence of a couple of mortars and pestles.

Checking another door, he found a cross between a living space and some sort of high tech machine shop littered with mechanical and computer parts. The next door proved to be to a more regular looking room, although the decorations suggested that the occupant was interested in motorcycles, while door number four featured a room that was just generally well kept.

Finally he managed to find a door that led out of the habitation area and into what appeared to be the living room/family room area where there was a modest sized cathode ray tube television and some chairs and sofas. Wandering a bit more, Lars eventually managed to find his way outside, where he discovered a short, round, almost wooden-soldier like robot standing guard over the compound.

Blinking a few times at this rather incongruous sight, Lars said, "Oh, hello. I guess I was brought in by the people of this place. Would you happen to know where they are? And if you are included amongst their number, then no offence was meant, it is just that you are giving off a very good appearance of being a devoted guard at the moment."

The robot looked up at him and pointed down a set of stone stairs. Nodding, Lars said, "Thank you," before descending to find a young man working away at a motorcycle with attached sidecar. Clearing his throat in a polite manner, Lars said, "Uh, hello?"

Looking up, the young man said, "Oh, you're awake! We thought you would be asleep a bit longer so we were doing some errands. Sorry we weren't in the house."

"Oh, uh, no need to worry, I'm pretty hardy," Lars said with a shrug. Technically the only thing he had to fear was anything capable of unmaking him, so if it didn't kill him outright he had little to worry about in the long term.

"You were pretty badly hurt when we first found you, but you do seem much better now. Anyway, my name is Morisato Keiichi, and come on with me; I'll fix you up something to eat. You've been asleep for two days, so you must be starving," Keiichi said with a bright smile.

"Oh, thank you Keiichi, but I uh… alright, I need to know how you'll react, so I'll need to know whether or not that robot guard is normal around here," Lars asked somewhat nervously.

"Oh, Banpei? He's uh… experimental… yeah, experimental," Keiichi said while nervously scratching the back of his head.

"So not at all normal, as in you deal with weird things on a regular basis… like say strange men suddenly appearing by your house in such a way that you choose to take care of them there instead of taking them to a hospital," Lars said.

"Umm… yeah. I'm guessing that you know that you're umm… _not human_," Keiichi nervously pointed out.

"Yeah, so don't worry about it. Besides, I'm more worried that you would be offended or spooked, I am the interloper here. But anyway, I don't need to eat… at least not in the way you do," Lars explained.

"Oh, I see. Sorry…" Keiichi began.

"No, no, no! I thank you for the offer; I just don't want you to waste your food on someone who has no need for it. Also, please excuse me, but I have yet to introduce myself. My name is Lars," Lars explained.

"Ah yes. Well, Lars-san, most of the rest of the household should be home soon, so we should head in," Keiichi said.

"Oh, please don't let me distract you from your own work, although I can understand that you might not want a stranger having free access to your home. Perhaps I could help you with your bike first?" Lars offered.

Keiichi smiled and said, "I would appreciate that Lars-san, if you think you would be of help."

Shrugging, Lars said, "I'm more familiar with large maritime engines, but I think I can be of assistance."

Keiichi blinked and he asked, "You know about machines."

Shrugging, Lars said, "It depends on the subject area. You want me to work on a diesel engine for a commercial fishing ship? I'm your man. You need me to get a finicky naval radio working, I can help you out. I also know a bit about military grade communication and navigation gear." The fact that the reason behind that last one was because he had been _bound _to the gear was left out.

"You're a sailor?" Keiichi asked in interest.

"I used to be. Times change… it's a bit of a long story that probably only needs to be told once, so we should wait until there are more people to hear the tale. Anyway, what exactly is the trouble with your bike?" Lars said, quickly moving the subject into more comfortable ground.

"Oh, it's nothing major; I'm just giving the Beemer a tune up. Changing the oil, cleaning the spark plugs, that sort of thing. I'm already almost finished," Keiichi said.

Squatting down next to the bike, Lars looked over it and said, "Nice, you're really taking care of this baby. Although I can see from the varying ages of the parts that this old girl has been through quite the number of scrapes."

Keiichi laughed nervously at that and said, "Bad luck seems to follow me wherever I go."

"We make our own luck kid. Even if the universe seems intent on giving us a bad hand at every turn, even if the gods themselves are out to get you, we can still make our own fate. Looking at this bike, I would say that you've had a lot of problems thrown your way, but the fact that you are still here to fix it tells me that you've made some really good luck for yourself," Lars said, growing sentimental. Despite his outward appearance of being in the prime of his life, he had been quite grizzled when he had made his decision to cheat death.

Third Impact had _not _been kind to him.

Shaking away the bad memories, Lars picked up a piece and said, "Well enough sentimentality from an old man. Let's get to finishing the job you started."

For about half an hour the two of them worked quietly, two experienced men doing a job they were good at, and Lars marvelled at the peaceful intensity Keiichi put into his work. He was the sort of quiet, dependable man of incredible patience and compassion who Lars would _really _not want to have to talk about his employers. Lars had long ago come to peace with the gods, but trying to explain his culture to such a peaceful young man from what appeared to be a peaceful universe would be… _awkward _to say the least.

Then Lars' senses began to tingle with the approach of a being on incredible power. Maybe not quite the same amount of power as say one of the major Daemon Nobility like Princess Hikari, but considering the fact that the feeling was also very different in its texture as well as its magnitude, Lars felt that even that impression might be off. Either way he would probably get ripped apart if he stepped out of line around this approaching being.

Sighing, he stood up and looked to where he felt the entity approaching from, and wondered why one of the big shots from this region had not shown up already. Keiichi noticed this as he was packing away his tools and asked, "What is it?"

"Something of incredible power is coming this way," Lars explained.

Frowning, Keiichi looked down the street before a young woman rounded the corner and his face broke out into a broad smile and he said, "Oh, that's just Belldandy-sama!"

It took Lars a second to recognize the fact that the woman he was looking at was also the source of the power he was feeling, and then he could just goggle in surprise at the way the two were greeting each other in such a familial way. Keiichi was clearly mortal and not a particularly impressive example of a mortal either, but here he was waving happily to a woman who could probably erase the planet from existence if she tried hard enough.

"Ah, Keiichi-san, I see our guest is awake. I hope you're feeling better today. My name is Belldandy," the young woman said, a bright, cheerful smile on her face, accentuated by the odd geometric facial markings and her long brown hair that framed everything so nicely. Then, incongruously enough, there were a few bags of groceries in her hands. Lars figured that she could probably just will such things into existence, and yet she had gone shopping.

Stumbling over himself, Lars plastered a somewhat terrified smile on his face and said, "Ah, hello. My name is Lars, and I thank you for your hospitality."

Her smile turning into something of frown/pout, Belldandy asked, "Lars-san, you're frightened. Why?"

"Well… err… you see… you see, I can feel just how powerful you are Belldandy… uh… sama would be the correct suffix I think… and it intimidates me," Lars admitted.

"Lars-san, don't be frightened of Belldandy-san," Keiichi said in protest. "She wouldn't hurt a fly."

Holding up his hands in warding, Lars said, "I'm sorry, I don't mean any offence, it's just like… well… an ant being able to comprehend an elephant. No matter how gentle the elephant, it is still so much enormously larger than the ant that it can't help but feel intimidated."

"Please don't be afraid Lars-san, I'll try to better to hide my power," Belldandy said conciliatorily.

Shaking his head, Lars said, "I don't think that is possible. I'm a uh… the technical term is a psychophage, in my case a panpsychophage, but a more understandable if less accurate term would be 'emotion eater'. I naturally consume ambient emotions and psychic emanations, so I am attuned to noticing those sorts of things. You, Belldandy-sama, shine like a star to me, so I will just have to accommodate to you."

"Oh, I see. Well, I'll try not to shine too brightly then," Belldandy said. "And please, call me Belldandy-san, or just plain Belldandy."

"Ah, thank you," Lars said.

Talking a bag of groceries from Belldandy, Keiichi followed her up the stairs to their home, with Lars following in some degree of confusion and trepidation behind.

Once inside, Belldandy and Keiichi went about preparing dinner. A moment after starting, Keiichi added on, "Oh yes, we won't need to make as much tonight. Lars-san said that he doesn't need to eat."

"Oh? If you don't mind asking, you said that you eat 'emotions' Lars-san, could you explain a bit more about that," Belldandy asked sweetly. Keiichi clearly missed it, but as a daemon Lars was much more sensitive to the subtleties of emotion that could come off a person. Right now Belldandy was saying, '_Hurt Keiichi here and I'll introduce you to an eternity of pain._'

"Uh… it's fairly complex, but it suffices to say that the majority of my daily diet is derived simply from ambient emotion. I don't actually have the capacity to 'drain' the emotions out of a person, and that would be counter-productive in the long term. So don't worry, I'm not any kind of monster or something like that," Lars explained hastily.

"So, what, you get sustenance from just being around people?" Keiichi asked curiously.

"Basically. So long as I'm around most kinds of sentient organic life I'll never starve, as I need very little to sustain myself unless I'm doing heavy activity. Obviously the stronger the emotion and the more people being emotional, the more energy for me," Lars explained a bit more thoroughly.

"_Any _emotion?" Belldandy asked, just the hint of suspicion in her voice.

Nodding, Lars said, "Yes, any emotion. But no, while a riot or war _would _fuel me with copious amounts of things like anger and fear and hatred and despair and the like, it's toxic for me in the long run. My kind needs to get a balanced diet or we'll eventually go insane. There are a few more specialized psychophages where I come from, but they are somewhat more limited and even they need to eat from a spectrum rather than just one type. My people are actually very interested in maintaining healthy, if expressive, populations of people. We're not bogeymen."

"Oh. That's interesting. I've never heard of any spirits quite like that before though," Belldandy said while chopping up ingredients.

"I'm kind of lost," Lars admittedly with a sheepish shrug. "I'm not from around here."

Smiling, Belldandy said in a happy, earnest tone, "Well, wherever you're from, you were taught excellent manners."

"Ah… thank you Belldandy-san," Lars said, glad that he had apparently satisfied her curiosity.

"Oh, Keiichi, could you fetch me some whole wheat flour from the pantry? We appear to be out over here," Belldandy said, causing Keiichi to nod and say, "Of course."

Once Keiichi was safely out of earshot Belldandy narrowed her eyes and asked in the nicest manner possible, "I can feel other voices emanating off of you, suppressed, enslaved ones. And psychophage means 'soul eater', not 'emotion eater'. So can you explain that to me?"

His eyes going wide with fright, Lars said in a hushed, strained voice, "Look! My existence is _complex_, but I'm really not here to hurt anyone you love or care about, nor am I a scout for some evil daemonic army. I'm just a guy trying to make the most out of my situation. And… and the souls in me aren't enslaved. Not in the way you would think."

"So you do have the souls of others in you," Belldandy said, somehow becoming infinitely more threatening without her appearance changing from that of a sweet, loving young woman.

"I'm not from around here. Things are very different where I come from. _Please_, let me explain!" Lars begged in terror.

"I am Belldandy, Goddess First Class, Unlimited License, Norn of the Present, and I know every last part of Creation, every last plane of existence. There is no place for things to be 'very different', a place where soul eating would be acceptable," Belldandy said while looming over Lars.

Before Lars could begin blubbering her words clicked with him, and he instead blinked and asked, "Wait, _where _am I?"

This seemed to take Belldandy off guard because she asked, "What?"

"Seriously, I thought that you were an experienced extra-dimensional traveller, but unless I'm _really _lost you should know that there are some places in the multiverse where things are rather unpleasant for the normal people," Lars stated.

Belldandy started to frown at him, but he was fortunately saved by Keiichi showing up with the flour and her apparent unwillingness to obliterate Lars in front of him. That gave him some time to think.

Okay, he was manifested here, and not stuck in the Warp, or the local equivalent. That was possible, but it required a universe that was _capable _of manifesting spiritual entities like him. If it did not have sufficient energy to support him or a side plane, then he would have not have been able to appear in this universe at all without being bound to a physical object. No matter how much energy was supplied to him, he simply would have bounced off.

That meant that he couldn't be very far outside the Great Wall, the outside multiverse just got too thin to support manifesting daemons. In fact, it was more likely that he was still somewhere inside the Great Wall. But Belldandy seemed ignorant of the wider multiverse while still being a dimensional traveller. But that was impossible. Inside the Great Wall you needed a hub universe to move around.

Unless of course this _was _a hub universe contained by the Great Wall. But with a hub universe you could go anywhere but another hub universe. Surely they should know just how much life sucked for the vast majority of the cosmoses contained by the Great Wall.

Then again, if he had bounced around the Doldrums he might very well have ended up in one of the theorized Z-hubs… but he didn't think the Borg had hit them _that _hard. Ugh… he was just glad that his job had given him some degree of multiverse cartography in order to relay messages across the void.

"Can I see a map of your universe?" Lars abruptly asked, causing both Keiichi and Belldandy to pause in confusion.

"What?" Keiichi asked.

"I need a map to try and figure out where I am, and where I'm from. I know you can do that, right Belldandy-san?" Lars asked.

Belldandy looked at him with a slight hint of suspicion before he spoke something in a language that Lars immediately recognized as a cosmic control language of the sort used in psychic incantations, only much more complex and powerful. In the middle of the table Lars was sitting at a holographic image sprang up.

"Oh… _shit_…" Lars muttered in Swedish. "I _am _lost. This is _nothing _like the cartography I'm used to."

Belldandy blinked and asked, "How can you not know of these places Lars-san?"

Frowning, Lars said, "I'm used to two types of multiverse cartography, inner and outer. Inner is for all of the places inside the Great Wall, while outer is what we theoretically use for stuff outside the Great Wall. If you were using Inner Cartography you would know that there are a lot of places in the multiverse not to touch with a ten foot cattle prod. If you were using Outer Cartography, you would know that there is a whole collection of places that were set aside because no one wanted to touch them with a ten foot cattle prod. But your multiverse map is strangely… _contained._ You've got a home for demons and the like, but everything is more or less all under a central authority. That's _not _what my home looks like."

Keiichi just stared at the holograph dumb founded while Belldandy frowned. Finally, she asked, "Okay, let's suppose that you _are _from somewhere outside Creation. How does that explain some of the things I've noticed about you?"

"Where I come from, people don't get an afterlife," Lars said bluntly.

Belldandy blinked and then asked in horror, "Where do the souls go?"

"Two options: the first is to be absorbed by a being capable of doing such a thing. You don't exactly survive the process, your identity tends to get subsumed into the commanding spirit, but it mostly beats the second option," Lars said.

"Which is?" Belldandy asked.

Lars formed both hands into loose fists before sticking them together and then blossomed them out. He said grimly, "They vanish. Poof. Gone. It takes a bit of time, but within a century or two all that is left of most minds is… _residue_. My deities have been eating the decomposed matter of billions of souls for decades now and show no signs of stopping. Most of the other minds within me come from that process… except for the soul of my wife."

"You _ate _the soul of your _wife_?" Keiichi asked in disbelieving shock.

"Technically one of my gods ate her soul and then regurgitated it into me when I agreed to join them. There was a… a _disaster _where I came from. Two actually. A lot of people died. Our world was nearly destroyed. We did what we _had to do_. And I'm not saying that as a fanatic excusing his behaviour, I'm saying that we often literally had no choice in our actions if we didn't want to go extinct. We live in an _extremely _hostile universe," Lars explained with increasing vehemence and passion.

"What did you _do_?" Belldandy asked, all signs of hostility gone, replaced by the caring, nurturing personality that seemed her default. Even Keiichi seemed eager to help. Lars could feel the emotions radiating off of them, and aside from the welcome boost in energy, he knew that these two were meant for each other despite their wildly differing circumstances.

"Me personally? I was a Danish fisherman whose home was destroyed when some greedy old men blew up Antarctica. Then, fifteen years later after the same old men _badly _abused a bunch of teenagers into trying to finish off the other half of humanity. Instead, they only absorbed the souls of two-thirds of the global population, my wife being one of them while I survived due to random chance. Their ascension to godhood was costly, half a billion souls each, but worth it. There are… _things _out there that would not be so merciful. Eventually, when I realized that my time was coming and that I was terrified of ceasing to exist as a person I cut a deal with the gods. I'll let myself be crammed into an antenna for a few centuries if you ascend me… and I want one of the souls used to power me up to be my wife, so I wouldn't be away from her ever again," Lars admitted.

"That's… that's _impossible._ There's only one Earth in the planes, and we would know about something that damaging," Belldandy said.

"I've seen two Earths. My home and one in another universe. There are lots of Earths scattered about the wider multiverse. I have no idea where your bubble multiverse is in relation, but there is a whole wider set of planes _outside _the boundaries of your cosmos," Lars explained.

Before Belldandy could reply to that there was a bright light from the living room and a clearly looking woman with dark skin, pale hair, and a fashion sense that Mislaato would approve of stumbled into the kitchen.

"Urd! I thought you had gone upstairs to get more info on our guest," Belldandy asked.

Panting from some form of exertion, she said, "I did. Turns out that malfunction in Yggdrasil that Skuld had to take care of was caused by _him_. According to our data _he's from outside Creation._"

Lars just looked at them and asked, "Do you believe me _now?_"


	28. New Syracuse

**Chapter Twenty-seven: New Syracuse**

"I must say that I am impressed that you decided to come here," Rong-Arya noted while idly tracing a clawed finger around the edge of the cup held in their hands, smiling in a shark toothed way at the man sitting across from them. "Although you needn't be so spooked, we are not _monsters_, contrary to evidence. We understand what a white flag is and we are not the sort of folks who would shoot people coming to talk about a peace treaty. We might not actually _agree_ to a treaty, but we won't shoot you for asking."

"Yes, well, you haven't exactly been very… talkative over the last year. You have mostly ignored all of our entreaties so far," Picard noted, his own tea not having been touched yet.

"Actions speak louder than words Picard. You're the first people to actually _come _in here, alone, weapons and shields down, broadcasting 'We want to talk', rather than sitting back somewhere distant surrounded by lots of guns. And then when we demanded that you come alone and in person, you did so. Most impressive, most impressive. That took the sort of balls we had thought had been excised from your culture," Rong-Arya said with a smile.

"I felt that under the circumstances it was better to take a risk such as this than continue with the way things had been going," Picard replied.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Now, tell me what was so damn important that you had to come here for. Is the maelstrom of war too much for you? Have the conflicts finally broken the back of the Federation and now you come here to surrender to us… or is there something else?" Rong-Arya asked, her eyes seeming to burn into Picard's soul, and he wondered if he was being telepathically analyzed. All accounts said that these people were incredibly skilled psychics, so it did not seem beyond their commander.

"Surrender? No. We take pride in our principles and will stand by them, unto death," Picard announced.

"An admirable sentiment, although I only wish that you had a better set of principles to stand by. Many Nazis also had principles that they held onto until death," Rong-Arya replied in a bored tone.

Wincing from that, Picard said, "Let us not get involved in an ideological debate at this juncture, we have a problem. A problem that concerns your people as well."

"Can you not be grateful for the Dominion fleet we took apart?" Rong-Arya asked before taking a sip of their tea.

"While you did it for your own reasons and the net result was less damage to us than your own raiding, that incident is immaterial to why I am here. I actually disobeyed orders to come here because there are elements in Starfleet who would prefer you dealt with at any cost due to the… destabilizing nature you have been having on our politics, I feel that despite your abominable practices you are less of threat to the Alpha Quadrant than the Borg," Picard explained.

"The Borg, huh? And are you sure that you aren't just more afraid of them personally than us?" Rong-Arya asked with a serene smile on their face.

"No, this is definitely beyond just my own hatreds and fears, although I will admit to them. For all the damage you have done, you do not seem concerned with conquest, just raiding and looting and sowing chaos… as it were. The Borg… the Borg, they will exterminate us, perhaps not in body but in the mind. And they come for you," Picard said.

"And what would you have us do?" Rong-Arya asked, assuming a bored slouch, a hand supporting their tilted head.

"I realize that I can ask you nothing, but I bring with me the location of where they have constructed a transwarp relay point. With this they can rapidly bring large numbers of their ships from their own space into the Alpha Quadrant," Picard said, pushing forward the data pad he had brought with him.

Picking it up, Rong-Arya went over it and said, "The Briar Patch huh? Eh… maybe those morons will put up a scrap. I will think…" Rong-Arya trailed off as a yeoman walked up to the door of the meeting room and made a gesture indicating that he had an important message.

Nodding, Rong-Arya let the yeoman come forward and whisper his message. Frowning slightly, the daemonhost said, "If you will excuse me, an important matter has come up. We will continue this conversation again once this other matter has been resolved, as it may have some bearing on my next set of actions. Yeoman Hallowell, please escort Captain Picard to his assigned room as a diplomatic guest."

Getting up, Rong-Arya immediately began to move through the raw stone halls of New Syracuse, the name of the settlement that had been constructed on the moon of Syracuse over the past year. Buried beneath the cratered surface of the airless satellite, tens of thousands of captured Federation, Cardassian, and even a few Klingon personnel worked alongside hundreds of thousands of transplanted Syracusans expanding the base and building the economy to make it a new home for all of the Syracusans still left on the planet below.

It also served as an emergency fallback position for forces operating beyond the Great Wall, with an enormous cavern two kilometres across and two hundred metres high excavated to allow an entire army the room to make a quick stop over. Normally the colossal chamber was kept empty and clean, but just a few minutes ago a great black orb had materialized out of the Warp and then unfolded to release a gore drenched army, a mighty, blood red Evangelion at its centre.

Marching through the somewhat confused troops, Rong-Arya barely spared a glance at a medical team carrying a young red-headed girl away on a stretcher before she came to the gigantic figure of Primarch Toji and saluted.

"**Primarch! You honour us with your presence, although I suppose that this means that not all has gone well?**" Rong-Arya said.

Shaking his head, Toji grumbled and returned the salute, "No, the enemy gained orbital superiority and we were forced to retreat. They thought to pin us on the ground by sacrificing their own troops, but unfortunately they were not made of stern enough stuff to delay our escape. What is the situation here, captain?"

"Unchanged from my last report. The shakedown of the _Stiletto _has gone well and we are ready for our next mission at any time, although we must admit that we would prefer to be relieved rather than abandon this outpost. The locals are no match for us, but we have made sure that we have always engaged in asymmetric fights assuming we were on the same technological level as the locals," Rong-Arya said, dropping the daemonic voice now that formal introductions were done with.

Nodding, Toji said, "We shall not trouble you long. We merely need to rest and clean up from the fight and the journey before we head back home. That should take no longer than a few hours."

"Nonsense good Primarch! Stay with us at least a day or two to rest. While I am sure that your marines are in fighting shape, I can see that you have civilians amongst your number who could use the extra downtime, and I am sure your men would appreciate the time just as much," Rong-Arya insisted.

"Well… yeah, it would be a good idea to wait a little bit longer if you have the resources to handle the strain. Now that I look over my forces, I can see that Operation Leliel was harder on them than I anticipated. In fact… damn it! I thought I ordered that thing shut off before something like Operation Leliel," Toji said, staring at the crew of his World Raider.

Looking over the fried anti-grav pods, they shrugged helplessly and said, "Apologies sir. The drive was off but it must have still been too hot and cracked under the strain of the transport."

Burying his face in a gauntleted hand, Toji said, "Kensuke is going to be right ticked off over this one."

Glancing over the tank, Rong-Arya said, "Nice. New model?"

Nodding, Toji said, "Yeah, it's the new anti-armour model. It can't carry Terminators because of all the space devoted to increased armour and generators, but with sponson mounted twin-linked bright lances, hull mounted twin-linked assault cannons, and a pintle mounted multi-melta means that one of these babies can rip apart pretty much any another tank we would ever come across. Throw in a squad of Marines kitted out for anti-tank work and the fact that the hover system lets you hot drop this baby behind enemy lines and _one _of these things can rip apart just a squadron of lesser vehicles single handed. Kensuke really went all out with this one."

Sighing, Rong-Arya said, "Too bad that this monster, like the _Stiletto, _reveals our weaknesses."

Having been floating bored above the two adults; Ali hovered in closer and asked, "What weaknesses? It's a Land Raider with the tracks replaced with Eldar anti-grav technology and weapons. It's faster, tougher, and hits harder than any weapons platform of its size from that the Old Gods would have had access to."

"Yes Little Ali and they're even thinking of trying to squeeze void shields and holo-projectors into the next production run… but I know what the captain is getting at and I agree with them. Kensuke understands it too, which is why he's designing the damn things in the first place. Simply put, we're too damn _weak _to afford anything less," Toji said with a sigh.

"That doesn't make sense. If we were weak we wouldn't be able to afford so much lavish technology," Ali pointed out.

"The _Stiletto _and the various makes of the World Raider tanks represent an enormous investiture of resources, in fact, _too _much investiture if we were a larger empire. For the price of _one _World Raider we could get twenty or thirty lesser tanks, which would be able to perform their job much more effectively as a group than a single super tank as they can cover much more ground. The problem is that our population is so small we can't afford the _crews _for twenty or thirty lesser tanks, so we have no choice but to invest all of our eggs in one basket if we want to have a hope of winning an engagement. The Marines are the same. The assault troops for the Reavers of Asukhon have jump packs _and _jump belts _and _Warp Spider teleporters, and the only reason that we don't all have power weapons is because chainswords and axes are _already_ overkill most of the time. Simply put, we have a shiny military with all sorts of toys but that's because it's tiny enough that we can afford to get away with everyone getting the premium polish," Toji explained.

Blanching, Ali asked, "So what happens once we start expanding?"

"We're already looking at less expensive and more logistically sound technologies, but for now all the shiny stuff is also serving as test beds for later on. For example, if we can solve the ammo and parts problem, my back-up sidearm will probably become the standard for officers in the next century," Rong-Arya said, patting one of the pistols at their side.

"Oh, is that a Mk. II Hellstorm fusion pistol?" Toji asked, taking a critical eye to the weapon.

"Mk. III actually, I got it just before the _Stiletto _left dry dock. Slightly less powerful but with more shots," Rong-Arya said.

"Nice. I know that Kensuke had a Mk. VI when we left just because he wanted the latest model off the assembly lines. I love the guy like a brother, but he's _really _obsessed with getting the newest stuff. I have no idea how his wife deals with it," Toji muttered.

"How does _your _wife deal with you hanging out all night to play plasma ball?" One of the Sons of Toji asked sarcastically while hauling some gear away.

"That's _training!_" Toji cried out in an annoyed tone while his men laughed. Obviously it was an old joke between them all.

"Toji?" Ali asked softly.

"Yes Ali?" Toji responded.

"How weak _are _we?" Ali inquired.

Frowning, Toji said, "That depends on your definition of 'weak'. If you mean in absolute terms, then the guys from this universe could destroy our major population and production centres on Earth if they threw a big enough fleet there, as we simply don't have the coverage to repel an attack of sufficient numbers. That _said _we've made sure to be very careful to cover our tracks and only engage in powers that can't fight back, so we're in no danger, thus from a certain point of view we are very strong. If the… Federation?" Toji paused, looking for Rong-Arya for confirmation, who nodded. "If the Federation _were _able to track us back to our Earth, it would be useless as we intentionally picked this place because it's in a balance of power situation with several other neighbours. They would have to strip most of their fleet assets to ensure enough of their ships slipped through our defences to begin bombardment of our cities, and their neighbours would most likely swoop in an take them apart if they tried, something they know would happen. Incidentally, you _did _leave a couple of powers alone, right?"

Nodding, Rong-Arya said, "We left the Romulan Star Empire and several of the lesser powers alone, and the Dominion are sufficiently aggressive that they would never ally with the Federation against us, although the reverse might be true."

"Good. How did the briefing go again? Oh yeah, the only guys you weren't supposed to antagonize were the Borg as our scouting indicated they were nuts enough and had enough resources to try and take us on single handed," Toji noted.

Rong-Arya blinked and said, "You know, it's been a year since I sent the report, but does blowing up a lone cube far away from its home system in self defence count as 'antagonizing' the Borg?"

The warning sirens chose that time to go off.

"Fuck," Rong-Arya noted unhappily.


	29. Damocles

**Chapter Twenty-eight: Damocles**

While jogging to the nearest launch pad, Rong-Arya pulled out a communications device similar in appearance to a military radio but working on completely different principles and demanded, "_Stiletto, _status report!"

"Multiple Borg cubes have just begun appearing on the far side of Syracuse. Current count is at thirty cubes and rising at a rate of approximately one every two seconds," O'Hare replied crisply.

"Son of a bitch," Rong-Arya muttered while pulling out the data pad Picard had given them. They thought that they had set up a proper bottleneck in the nebula but the only way to get ships in like that was with some form of FTL that bypassed the disruptive effects of local conditions. "Can you make a straight line vector, or at least a near straight line, between their current location and the following coordinates?"

After a few moments O'Hare replied, "Affirmative ma'am."

Running through two life times of tactical and strategic training and one of actual experience, along with a survey of the coming timelines, Rong-Arya figured that the Borg had placed their LZ behind the planet to prevent the _Stiletto _from simply shooting them as they exited.

"Alright, hold station over New Syracuse. All weapons are to go free, all defensive measures activated. All rules of engagement are suspended. Shoot to kill, shoot at full charge with all available weapons, and do not stop shooting until all of those bastards are scrap, you here me? No artistry, just kill them: quick, clean, and efficiently," Rong-Arya ordered.

"And you captain?" O'Hare asked.

"I will attempt to make my way to the ship, but we cannot afford to delay the battle once the Borg decide for it to be joined. You are all well trained and you can function without me. Perhaps not as well, but a single person, no matter how skilled, cannot become the lynchpin of battle," Rong-Arya replied.

There was a pause and then several voices, the entire bridge crew all announced, "Yes ma'am! For the glory of Chaos!"

* * *

Tactical Cube Designation 1 of 60 beginning combat mission against species designation 9251

Primary objective: Species 9251 ship designation Stiletto

Secondary objective: All other species 9251 assets

Tertiary objective: Gather data on Species 9251 for further analysis

Primary objective threat analysis: Species 9251 ship designation Stiletto

-Power generation: Unknown

-Defensive measures: Unknown material used for armour, scans inconclusive. Unknown method of energy shield detected, energy handling capacity presumed high. Defensive holographic screens detected, reducing accuracy by 15.2009

-Offensive measures: Unknown. Prior engagement burned out sensors upon activation of primary weapon system. Assume extreme

-Acceleration profile: Unknown.

Overall threat rating: EXTREME

Beginning engagement

…

Cubes designated 12 of 60 and 38 of 60 destroyed by primary weapon of Species 9251 Stiletto

Tactical consideration: Avoid aligning cubes such that a shot from the primary weapon of Species 9251 Stiletto cannot strike more than one cube simultaneously

Cubes designated 7 of 60, 19 of 60, 58 of 60, and 59 of 60 destroyed by primary weapon of Species 9251 Stiletto

Updating data on Species 9251 Stiletto: Nonlinear acceleration demonstrated capacity to exceed 1000G

Tactical consideration: Recharge time and acceleration exceeds capacity of cubes to comply with prior tactical consideration

Tactical analysis of the destruction of cubs 7 of 60, 19 of 60, 38 of 60, 58 of 60, and 59 of 60

-Shield analysis: Primary weapon of Species 9251 Stiletto is a high frequency coherent electromagnetic beam. Proper shield modulation will allow all energy to be devoted to energy cancellation

-Energy handling: Energy output of primary weapon for Species 9251 Stiletto exceeds total reactor output of four tactical cubes by an unknown number of orders of magnitude.

-Structural analysis: Photon momentum imparted by primary weapon of Species 9251 Stiletto exceeds structural integrity fields and materials capacity by an unknown number of orders of magnitude

Adaptation consideration: Shield modulation possible but of negligible use. Construction of new cubes required. Addition of sufficient armour, inertial dampers, reactors, and shields not possible with current technology. Increase reactor and attendant technologies output by a minimum of five orders of magnitude. Increase materials technology and attendant technologies by a minimum of five orders of magnitude.

Species list known to have such technologies:

-List contains 1 entry

-Species 9251

Assimilation priority of Species 9251 recommended increase

Tactical consideration: bring additional forces

Cubes 2 of 60, 3 of 60, 4 of 60, 6 of 60, 11 of 60, 17 of 60, 20 of 60, 23 of 60, 31 of 60, 33 of 60, 47 of 60, and 52 of 60 all destroyed by secondary weapons fire from Species 9251 Stiletto.

Tactical consideration: Maintain minimum safe distance of 20 km between cubes in all directions

Tactical analysis of destruction of cubes 2 of 60, 3 of 60, 4 of 60, 6 of 60, 11 of 60, 17 of 60, 20 of 60, 23 of 60, 31 of 60, 33 of 60, 47 of 60, and 52 of 60 by secondary weapons fire from Species 9251 Stiletto

-Cubes 4 of 60, 23 of 60, and 52 of 60 destroyed by secondary weapon causing critical structural damage while passing through superstructure at high relativistic speeds

-Cubes 2 of 60, 3 of 60, 6 of 60, 11 of 60, 17 of 60, 20 of 60, 31 of 60, 33 of 60, and 47 of 60 destroyed by high energy plasma warhead detonation

Adaptation consideration: None known against high acceleration relativistic kill vehicles at short ranges. Destruction of launcher only known effective countermeasure. Construction of new cubes with improved materials and/or energy generation and shield technology possible adaptation method against detonation of warhead.

Species list known to have such technologies:

-List contains 1 entry

-Species 9251

Assimilation priority of Species 9251 recommended increase

Tactical consideration: bring additional forces

Tactical consideration: 28.3333 of initial forces destroyed

Tactical consideration: Mission clock reads 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes 8 seconds 57 milliseconds

Tactical consideration: Tertiary and quaternary weapons of Species 9251 Stiletto have yet to fire. Probable reason: insufficient time to acquire targets not destroyed by primary and secondary weapons as multiple weapons locks already detected

Tactical consideration: Probable tertiary weapons mounts exceed number of remaining cubes

Tactical analysis: 98.4713 chance of complete destruction of remaining cubes within the next 40 seconds

Tactical consideration: Temporary disengagement from combat operations recommended. Methods of disengagement before destruction: None

Mission analysis: Mission has 0.0000 probability of completing primary objective. Mission has 0.0001 probability of completing secondary objective. Tertiary objective unsatisfactorily fulfilled.

Mission update: Primary objective changed

Primary objective: Observe effects of Collective weapons on Species 9251 Stiletto

Tactical consideration: Species 9251 primary and secondary weapons ranges unknown but exceed Collective ranges by a minimum of an order of magnitude. Probable ranges of tertiary weapons also exceed Collective ranges

Mission analysis: 3.8014 chance of completing primary objective

Unknown consideration: Ha! Ha! Our psychics hacked your Collective, eat shit and die motherfuckers!

* * *

"Well… that's sixty down. Let's see what the next wave has in store," Rong-Arya commented as they sat down in the captain's chair, having only recently managed to get a shuttle up to the _Stiletto _once the shooting died down.

"Are we just going to sit here and let them throw shit at us?" Ichiro-Faust asked.

"Negative. As much as these bastards are self-contained a cube on a combat mission has to chew threw fuel and ammo at a high rate, and they only have an outpost in this part of the galaxy. There are a limited number of cubes in this quadrant that their logistics should be able to reliably support, so we will wait half a day for the next wave before we attempt to move on their outpost. If it was just us fighting I would go on the offence right away, but…" Rong-Arya trailed off at the last bit, the implications clear. "Right. Plans for evacuation are already underway. Once the civilians and the Primarch are secure we can go kick those Borg fucktards in the balls."

"Ma'am, we are detecting new contacts on the opposite side of Syracuse," Xavier reported.

"Hmmm… let's see what they learned from that spanking," Rong-Arya muttered while leaning forward almost eagerly.

Over the next few minutes two hundred Borg cubes of several different makes and models appeared, arranging themselves into two groups of a hundred each, arranged into hemispheres with each individual cube positioned so that the _Stiletto _could not hit multiple cubes with the Pulsar Lance or its torpedoes. Once both hemispheres were formed up, one began to go spin-wise around the planet while the other went anti-spin-wise two minutes later. More cubes were arriving and forming up into a third formation.

"Clever… clever. Still rather simplistic and brute force, but they are clearly trying to minimize damage the _speed _at which we can blow them to the Warp so that they can get in close to brawl with us, and possibly attack New Syracuse while we are engaged with them. This will require… _finesse _on our part," Rong-Arya noted, looking over the approaching formations.

"Commander, we still have the Bearers on board, correct?" They finally asked.

"Affirmative ma'am," Ichiro-Faust answered.

"Designate a cube, I don't care which, and cripple it. But do _not_ destroy it. Make sure all of the gunners have it designated as a friend until I say otherwise. Once its shields have been knocked down, teleport the Bearers on to it. Make sure that they are carrying the Infinite Despair Plague, with the objective of getting into as many communications nodes as possible. The only way to keep up this sort of brutal meat grinder tactic is if your troops either are more afraid of going back than forward or if they have no fear. I want to make sure neither is a factor," Rong-Arya said with a predatory grin.

"The Bearers will be overjoyed," Ichiro-Faust replied with an equal grin.

* * *

Sergeant Gregor Stamatelos was overjoyed. The last time they had fought the Borg they had slaughtered the slow moving cyborgs by the hundreds before growing bored, but this time they were authorized to carry one of Mama Reigle's greatest blessings: the Infinite Despair Plague. Created as an anti-boarding measure, it was capable of corrupting metals as well as flesh, and as an added bonus it could force grow circuitry capable of causing fear and pain in anything more advanced than a calculator.

The idea was that if your boarding vessel sudden was terrified of the ship it was trying to board it would make the operation considerably more difficult.

Locking his helmet on his a wet crunch of rusting mechanisms lubricated by bursting, necrotic boils, Gregor lead his men to the teleport pad where fellow servants of Reigle were standing by with hoses to douse them with fluids tapped directly from the organic parts of the ship so that they would be inoculated with the deadly plague. The only down side of this operation was that they would have to give up the disease as it was too dangerous to keep.

And that meant- horror of horrors- _decontamination!_

As he was being sprayed down with the thick brown slurry, Gregor said over the radio to his men, "Alright boys, once we get aboard we are to split into two teams of five and hit as many communications nodes as you can, spreading the blessings of Mama Reigle as far and wide as possible. Let us teach these Borg to embrace pain and despair as thoroughly as we have."

With a flash of light and the bang of air rushing in to fill the void where they had once stood, the Terminators from the Bearers of Reigle disappeared from the _Stiletto_ and reappeared on the cube that had just recently had its shields knocked off-line by a single hit from a bombardment cannon.

"Swarms active boys!" Gregor cried out wetly while giving the psychic cue to the living hives of flying insects within his body. He gave his flesh to them willingly so that they would have a home and food, and in turn they would attack his enemies. All of his men were the same.

It took three Borg drones collapsing screaming to the ground for the Collective to notice that the Bearers were even _on _the cube and thus take action. By that time the walls of the cube were already starting to corrode under the influence of the deadly plague carried by the Bearers and the swarms of buzzing insects surrounding them like black clouds. Force fields snapped up to contain the Terminators, but the ones that did not fail due to sudden and rapid decay were downed with the simple method of a power fist to the projector.

As the two groups of Terminators made their slow march through the cube, the Collective watched on in horror as more and more drones collapsed, tearing at their own implants, wailing in agony. At first they tried to gather more data, but when they detected the presence of microscopic fusion reactions they realized that they were dealing with something willing to fire plasma guns at their nano-probes and that they could not devise a defence against that sort of thing. So they just shut off the infected drones before their screaming could disrupt the purity of the Collective.

Then the plague began rewiring their transmitters. The Infinite Despair Plague was creating a new Collective, one where all of the processing power was dedicated to transmitting the dying, agonized screams of thousands of drones into the Collective at large.

Coordination in the cube dropped considerably.

The Sergeant Gregor found a communications node; one used for broadcast, and plunged his Viral Cleaver into the mechanism. Instead of being destroyed, the node was instantly infected, and Gregor broadcast to the Collective, _all of it_, "Resistance is futile. You _will _be infected," before he was shut out.

The Collective was composed of countless trillions of minds spread across the galaxy, but hundreds of billions of them were unwillingly assimilated. The screams of the dying and the declaration of intent in the Alpha Quadrant forced into their minds temporarily awoke the terror of forced assimilation. So many billions of voices joined their fears to others, creating a chain reaction of panic and terror. For exactly twelve seconds before the cold, machine parts of the Collective could clamp down, a single emotion raged across the length and breadth of the galaxy.

_Fear._

* * *

Ironically, what happened next would not have occurred if not for Rong-Arya's decision to terrify the Borg. One of the cubes, gripped in panic, began shooting wildly. A single, solitary torpedo went far, far off course, if it could be said to have ever had a course to begin with.

By Chaos standards, it was a pathetic bomb, two hundred megatons of explosive energy from a matter/antimatter explosion. Just enough to possibly cause minor damage if it could penetrate the shields of the _Stiletto _and it hit a sensitive location.

It wasn't aimed at the _Stiletto_.

The weapon crashed into the primary hydroponics facility on New Syracuse before detonating. Most of the blast was directed outward, and with no atmosphere on the moon to contain it, a little more than half the energy radiated harmlessly into space.

Rock, organic matter, glass, plastics, metals, they all flashed to monatomic vapour in milliseconds after initiation under intense gamma ray bombardment. Again, most of the energy was lost as instead of this vapour compressing against an atmosphere much of it was blown off into space. But in the connecting tunnels beneath the facility, there was enough confinement that pressure could build in the instant before the rocks they were carved from turned molten from the incredible heat.

The entire hydroponics facility, the size of a small city, was destroyed in an instant, but nearly twenty kilometres away was where the significant damage was done. One of the hab domes exploded as a ball of superheated gas to point where it became plasma erupted out of the connecting tunnels. Thousands died, cooked by the fury of the fireball in an instant or suffocated when they found their air either lacking in oxygen or simply evacuated out the hole in the ceiling.

In orbit, the bridge crew of the _Stiletto _blinked in surprise. So far the Borg had been ignoring the settlement.

Then Rong-Arya's perfect memory kicked in. They had helped plan the construction of New Syracuse. The primary habitation area and the arrival area for the Primarch hadn't been touched but they knew what had been in that hab dome.

"_**THAT WAS THE PRIMARY NURSERY DOME!**_" They screamed out in horror. Tens of thousands of children and youths of half a dozen species had been in there along with their care givers.

"**New plan boys. We finish these guys up, we smash their outpost in this quadrant, and then we track them back to their homes and we make the Borg **_**extinct**_," Rong-Arya declared, ripping apart the armrests of their chair in fury while a selfish part of them was glad that Cassandra, the babe they had adopted from the installation that had grown into New Syracuse, had been kept aboard the _Stiletto_.

The Borg would _pay _for this.


	30. Briar Patch

**Chapter Twenty-nine: Briar Patch**

"**Communications uplink from Earth ma'am, Priority One,**" a disembodied voice declared to the bridge crew of the _Stiletto_ a few minutes after the last Borg cube was scrap in space. The battle had been… rather underwhelming really. For hours the Borg had come like lambs to the slaughter, utterly unable to damage the _Stiletto _while their own coordination was still disrupted from the earlier attack on the Collective. It had all of the nervous energy of battle with none of the risk, leaving the crew on edge and drained.

"Let me hear it then Lars," Rong-Arya demanded dismissively.

"**Message requests that you take it privately**," Lars informed her with a touch of nervousness.

Rong-Arya raised an eyebrow at that. 'Requesting' in this context meant that someone really high up the chain of command was about to chew them out. Damn it! The New Syracuse Disaster had been an accident!

Getting up, Rong-Arya went over to the private communication chamber, opening lock with a particular psychic key before entering and securing the thick armoured door behind them. They then said, "Okay, Lars, let me hear it now."

In the center of the large chamber a massive psycho-holographic image appeared and said, "Oh, but it will be so much to speak face to face."

Rong-Arya's jaw dropped before they hit the ground and said, "**Lord Tzintchi! What have we done to receive this honour?**"

"Oh don't grovel, if there's one thing I can't stand its people grovelling," Tzintchi said dismissively.

"Uh… I thought you _loved _grovelling?" Rong-Arya asked.

"Actually I do, it's a massive stroke to the ego. But I enjoy screwing with people's minds more and quoting from a movie nearly seventy years old really screws with people," Tzintchi said with a shrug.

"You are… as unpredictable as ever Lord Tzintchi," Rong-Arya admitted.

"Damn straight, and don't you forget it," Tzintchi replied. "Anyway, on to the reason I called. I am giving you a direct order here. _Do not engage the Borg outside the Alpha quadrant._"

"What?" Rong-Arya asked in shock.

"You heard me. Stay the fuck away from their home territory. We've done an analysis and the _Stiletto _does not have the firepower to do sufficient damage to their primary defensive installations. So you are ordered to not risk your ship or your crew trying to pull an Ahab. Take out their base in the Alpha Quadrant and then return home. New Syracuse is to be completely evacuated by Toji and his forces," Tzintchi ordered.

"We… Lord… we _can't _let this go!" Rong-Arya cried out in outrage.

"Rong-Arya, what do you call proclaiming a crusade to kill trillions of beings and drive a species to extinction, toppling one of the most powerful groups in a galaxy all over the deaths of a few thousand people?" Tzintchi asked.

"Official government policy?" Rong-Arya suggested.

"Yes! But you also have to be successful at exterminating your enemies the first time or they tend to come back to bite you in the ass. And, if necessary, you almost might need to bide your time and wait for the right moment to do that. Which is why with the destruction of their base, the _Stiletto's _first tour will officially come to an end. That said, we'll remember this," Tzintchi said, and then the holograph shifted to a slowly rotating image of a new ship.

"You like?" Tzintchi's disembodied voice said. "It's the early design model for our first battleship. A bit overambitious, yes, but we figure we can start construction within the next fifty to a hundred years once we have the construction yards built and the experience of building cruisers. It's obviously an early draft of the design, but honestly, our designers are bored. With all the information we've passed down to them, for the most part they can only twiddle their thumbs and come up with crazy ideas until we can actually build and test their designs. Thus on paper, we already have over twenty different classes of ships."

"And you're showing us this because…?" Rong-Arya asked tentatively.

His face returning and replacing the ship, Tzintchi said, "Because the _New Syracuse _class battleships will have the first mission to exterminate the Borg from the multiverse. Don't fuck up and you're guaranteed the captain's chair for that mission. Really impress us over the next few decades and that will be the flagship for the fleet deployed to the task."

There was a pause before Rong-Arya said, "So when do you want the keys back by?"

"Well, you need to have the girl home by ten, so I'll want the keys in my hands no later than eleven, you got that? And make sure you fill up the tank before you bring it into the garage," Tzintchi said with faux seriousness.

"Got it. Thank you Lord Tzintchi, we won't fail you," Rong-Arya said.

"I know you won't," Tzintchi replied before the transmission cut out.

* * *

In the Palace back on Earth, Tzintchi moved a few pieces about. Things were about to get interesting. With the aftermath of the first stage of his overall scheme still having yet to cool, there was still much to do for the next stage. He had some info now on the outside multiverse. Now he needed more on the structure of the barrier they were trapped in. They could see much, but it seemed that the designers of this trap had made sure that it was impossible to go anywhere you wanted.

For example, their agent Ethan Rayne could not be contacted if a psychic signal was sent from Haruhi's universe, but it could be sent directly, something that indicated that any of the hubs they had discovered so far were incapable of direct contact with each other. Quite interesting really.

Then there were the Doldrums, sections of entire universes where the energy content was much lower, and the physics much less compliant to things like psychics or faster than light travel. As far as early scouting could tell, you had to go directly from one universe to the next in the Doldrums instead of using a hub, but as one moved away from the 'centre-line' travel became harder.

So far any long range expeditions had remained theoretical, centuries off at best, but Tzintchi could feel the tides of fate tugging at him. There was something out there that demanded a thread be pulled to unravel something. But he couldn't exactly say what was happening.

So he was going to throw the _Stiletto _into the heart of things and see what happened. It should have the supplies to make it home through the Doldrums.

Should.

* * *

In the past two months the Briar Patch had been transformed radically by the appearance of the Borg. Originally a number of scout ships had arrived with the equipment to construct a transwarp gate, and within a month they established a forward base hiding in the unstable nebula, the greatest concentration of Borg military might in well… ever. Not since the war with Species 8472 had the Borg met such a threat, and unlike the biotech of Species 8472 there was as of yet no reason why assimilation should be impossible. The Borg just needed to use the right methods.

Also, as an unexpected bonus they had discovered a planet inhabited by primitives that had some unusual radiation about it that locals had been studying. They actually had a collector mostly finished but seemed unready to use it.

After capturing the installation the Borg, seeing the metaphasic particles about the planet as more valuable than the effort make the small population on the surface into drones, had completed the array and turned the world into a lifeless rock. Thus ended the Baku.

Even better, the Borg had assimilated one of the warships in orbit after it had destroyed one of the scout ships with a peculiar weapon. While subspace weapons were not exactly something new to the Borg, very few races pursued research into them very far as the weapons were far too unstable, these were something they had never seen before and thus had happily assimilated the ship.

Now, in the wake of the disastrous assault on the Damocles Nebula, the Borg were scrambling to adapt. The initial target had proved not just worth the effort, but the fact that it had repulsed hundreds of Borg ships had forced a re-evaluation of current tactics. They were at least fairly certain they had solved the problem as to how Species 9251 had hacked the Collective.

Unfortunately they had not quite figured out the problem of how to deal with a multi-gigaton spewing death machine with an unknown FTL system suddenly appearing on the edge of their base and accelerating towards high c velocities while firing all guns.

* * *

"You know what? I love high c combat. It's the colours really," Rong-Arya stated in a bored tone as the explosions began. "On approach, all the pyrotechnics get blue shifted, so you get to see all of the infrared that we miss most of the time, and there really is a lot of it. Then, while moving away everything is red shifted and we get to see the interesting ultraviolet tones that add so much. Add in length contraction and all of that fascinating relativistic stuff and it's really quite pretty to see a twenty-seven cubic kilometre cube take a hundred gigaton bombardment cannon shot to the centre of mass."

"The battle is going according to plan ma'am. Borg forces are currently at 75 initial strength and dropping rapidly," Ichiro-Faust noted.

"Excellent, excellent. Continue the attack like this. Nothing new from them?" Rong-Arya asked.

"No new tactics or technologies being displayed. Sensors do show that there is a ship near the centre of the formation that is not of standard Borg configuration, but it is communicating with them. It's probably a captured local vessel, so no threat," Ichiro-Faust noted.

"If the Borg captured it then it must have some interest to them. Get a firing solution to the gunners for the next time we make a pass on their position. We don't want to take any chances," Rong-Arya ordered.

"Affirmative ma'am, it's… it's fired something into our current path," Ichiro-Faust reported with some confusion.

"Switch from our current path to a linear one Lieutenant Striker, keep us out of the path of whatever that was," Rong-Arya demanded.

"Aye-aye ma'am," Striker replied, taking the ship out of its long, slowly spiralling inwards side-slip that allowed the front and port guns to be fired at the Borg and throttled the engines up 80, breaking them off from the Borg until they could evaluate this new threat.

Half a light second from their previous location something very strange happened.

Rong-Arya blinked and asked, "Lieutenant Xavier, what in the Warp is that?"

After several seconds, Xavier said grimly, "It's a Warp space rift."

"Damn it! We didn't know that they could do that!" Rong-Arya cried out.

"Captain… it's accelerating towards us," Xavier reported a second later.

Rong-Arya blinked their burning eyes once before they asked, "What do you mean by that Lieutenant?"

"I mean that it is rapidly moving towards us, its velocity increasing with each second," Xavier clarified in a somewhat stressed tone.

"Captain, I think I know what's happening. Weapons crews are reporting an increase in the stress levels on the S2 and S3 engines. They're essentially Warp taps so with a tear like that out there, it could be drawn to the nearest point of similar energy," Ichiro-Faust suggested.

"Cut all power to the holofields and divert the energy to the void shields," Rong-Arya snapped, and the crew quickly relayed the orders. "Also, I want torpedoes launched at their transwarp gate; we should at least make sure that bastard gets take out before we leave."

The _Stiletto _ploughed through pillowing clouds of unstable metreon gas, the strange substance lighting up off their void shields, creating a strange counter point to the eerie light of the tear that followed doggedly at their heels, and it dropped a pair of torpedoes in its wake. Their engines lighting up and pushing them through the nebula, they cut trails of fire straight to the heart of the Borg position, crashing into the ring in space they had constructed to serve as their way in and out of the Alpha Quadrant. The torpedoes actually had a much lower yield than the main guns, but they were designed to slip past void shields and punch through armour to detonate inside a ship, a design that mostly made up for their lack of overall firepower but was rather useless against enemies that did not use void shields.

"Damn… okay, so the explosion shut down the gate, but there's still a lot of debris that could be reactivated," Xavier reported.

"Hit it with another pair then," Rong-Arya retorted.

"The rift is getting awfully close ma'am," Xavier pointed out.

"Fire when ready then. The gods have some plan for this region and the Borg do not factor into them. Plus if we can't wipe out their species right now, we might as well settle for ruining their plans," Rong-Arya said.

"Port tube is ready, starboard will be ready in ten seconds," Ichiro-Faust replied.

"Fire," Rong-Arya ordered.

What happened next was something that no one in Chaos particularly liked to talk about. As befitting their nature, random, unlikely things tended to happen around them. Unfortunately, while they liked to use this to screw with people, it also meant that Murphy and his friend Finagle liked to take a wrench to them with equal frequency.

The tear struck the back of their void shields. A sheet of lightning rippled across the surface of the shield. It could have gone anywhere. It chose to go up the port side of the ship. It could have happened at any time. It chose to happen just in time for the torpedo just launched to reach the void shield and get a massive amount of energy grounded into it.

The warhead was normally well designed and would have simply gone inert, but the crews had been ordered to tamper with the fuses so that the torpedoes would not slow down before detonating as if they were facing void shields, meaning that it was live the moment it left the tubes.

A small star was birthed next to the _Stiletto _right as the tear in reality caught up to them. The port torpedo tube was smashed, and dozens of weapons emplacements were stripped away in the explosion. The starboard torpedo was knocked off its track just as it was launching and its motor fused the weapon into place before it realized it was stuck in the tube and shut off.

"Status report!" Rong-Arya demanded.

"Severe damage to the port side, damage reports still in coming but several weapons mounts are inoperative. Void shields are down. Starboard torpedo tube is inoperable. The rift appears to have been sealed by energy from the explosion," Ichiro-Faust reported quickly before adding on, "Oh and the Borg appear to have noticed that we have no shields and are incoming."

"Fuck. All hands, prepare to repel boarders. I want shields up as quickly as possible and a firing solution on that fucking ship. I want it _dead_," Rong-Arya snapped.

As the bridge crew began to go about their tasks, a strange humming noise alerted them to trouble. Even before the Borg boarding parties had finished materializing though Rong-Arya was already out of her command throne, daemon sword drawn while security crews were readying their own weapons.

The first three Borg on the bridge did exactly nothing before being cut down, but as was typical Borg response they simply sent more drones. As was the response of a well trained bridge crew, no one being directly attacked did anything but their jobs. Striker brought the ship around so that the starboard side and its fully functional weapons were presented to the incoming Borg ships. O'Hare coordinated inter-ship communications to make sure that damage control and the anti-boarding parties did not interfere with each other. Xavier made sure that the still functioning sensors were giving adequate data to the gunnery crews. Ichiro-Faust prioritized targets while also occasionally ripping the head off a drone that got too close.

After decapitating one drone and setting another on fire with their minds, Rong-Arya said, "How goes getting the void shields online Mr. Ichiro-Faust?"

"It goes, oh captain my captain, but these blackguards help not the matter," Ichiro-Faust replied.

Blowing away a drone with their fusion pistol, conveniently decorated to look like a 17th Century naval pistol, Rong-Arya said, "Oh aye. Do we have the range of that cutter that crippled us so? We do so wish to see her captain swinging from the yard arm."

Ripping the heart out of a stunned drone, Ichiro-Faust replied, "Alas, these scallywags seem to have realized the only way to bring down our shields is with whatever they have stashed away in that boat, so they have formed up a defensive wall of cubes. If we had torpedoes…"

"What was that last part Mr. Ichiro-Faust?" Rong-Arya asked with a grin on their face while running a drone through, causing its life to fade as its soul was ripped out.

"Torpedoes ma'am," Ichiro-Faust replied, a grin growing as they realized where this was going.

"_Damn _the torpedoes! Four bells! Mr. Striker, take us ahead into the fray," Rong-Arya said with a laugh that soon infected the rest of the crew as the _Stiletto _came about, pointing its ram prow at the heart of the Borg formation, its massive engines flaring enormously, causing the frigate to surge forward like a rapier thrust from a lunging duellist.

"Mr. O'Hare, if you would be so kind as to give me the intercom," Rong-Arya asked, sword in one hand, pistol in the other, and Borg blood splattered on their face and uniform.

"Aye-aye ma'am!" O'Hare replied, snickering at the absurdity of the scenario. He then nodded when it was ready.

"**All hands, this is the captain speaking. We are currently about to plunge head first into the enemy position, so preparing for impact would be advised at this time. Also, I appear to have decided that today is silly accent day, so crew hands are asked put on their best pirate voice while officers are urged to speak like 19****th**** Century British Royal Navy officers. Stiff upper lip when facing these knaves and all that. What do you say to that?**" Rong-Arya announced.

Even as blast doors sealed across the ship the cries of "_YAAAAAAR!_" could be heard on the bridge.

After a moment O'Hare said, "The Space Marines request to know which silly accent they should adopt."

"**Tell those daft leathernecks to give me an oorah!**" Rong-Arya demanded flippantly while decapitating a drone.

After a moment O'Hare said, "Response is 'Oorah'."

Laughing aristocratically, Rong-Arya shot the bowels out of another drone before saying, "Maybe those Devil Dogs will put some steel in the spines and fire in the bellies of these daft knaves!"

"Wrong century my captain and I suspect the sentiments will be reversed, but good show nonetheless," Ichiro-Faust said in a bad faux British accent.

"Mr. Ichiro-Faust, I suspect that none of the tongues we are so aping have ever been used outside of bad motion pictures. Oh ho! Let the cheese flow like water and deal with it, for the madness has taken us. **All hands, brace for impact!**" Rong-Arya cried out theatrically as the _Stiletto _plunged into the heart of the Borg formation.

Aside from beaming hundreds, possibly thousands of drones in a vain attempt to seize the ship, the Borg had also been hammering away at bare hull as the _Stiletto _bore down at relativistic speeds on their position, firing cutting lasers and torpedoes as quickly as they could. The warship was awash with plasma and several deep cuts had been gouged where focused fire had hit weak points, but the mighty warship had yet to suffer anything that could really stop it. Its entire ram prow glowed white with thousands of strikes from dozens of cubes, but the materials that made it up could handle much worse.

Like a burning arrow, the _Stiletto _plunged into the Borg formation, its prow slicing through the tangled jumble of piping and machinery that was a Borg cube like it was made of butter. In an astonishingly tiny fraction of a second the _Stiletto _was through and ploughing into another cube, burning its retros as it went, shedding velocity while frying enemy ships as effectively as if they had been hit by direct weapons fire. They punched straight through four cubes before they came to a relative stop.

Once slowed down enough, the weapon mounts that had been covered up to avoid being ripped off by the ramming popping out of their covers to begin blazing away at the targets in all directions.

"The scoundrels that did so wound us are ahead my captain!" Xavier announced, affecting a French aristocratic accent.

"Ah! Then ram them you Napoleonic bastard!" Rong-Arya declared.

"_Non_! It is the Louis who I serve! For the Crown!" Xavier announced, cackling as Striker throttled the engines once more.

"Yar! Just do it ya poncy bilge rat!" One of the anti-boarding crew announced while chainsawing a drone to death.

"I am an officer and a gentleman good sir! Of _course _I will do it!" Striker replied as the _Stiletto _bore down on the relatively tiny ship now desperately trying to get away.

As a last ditch effort the assimilated Son'a ship tried to fire its subspace weapon again while getting out of the way, but unfortunately it only managed to get clipped by the _Stiletto _and launch its destructive and unpredictable weapon straight into the remains of the transwarp gate… where there were still functioning and energized transwarp coils.

"Oh. Shit," Rong-Arya noted a swirling green and black vortex of fractured space-time opened up off their port bow. "Get us out of here!"

"Already on it ma'am!" Striker announced as he engaged the engines to try and take them out of range of the rapidly expanding singularity.

"Gravitational fields are increasingly exponentially. We're getting drawn in!" Xavier cried out.

Outside the Borg ships that had not already been destroyed discovered to their chagrin that they were now falling towards a ravenous maw of non-reality that was ready to rip their ships apart with glee, and not only were their engines not quite up to the task, but there was also a perceptible 'wind' of debris and nebula gas that was really not helping in their efforts to escape annihilation. Already the metreon gas was igniting, damaging ships that had so far escaped the battle untouched.

"Engines are at 95 captain!" Striker announced as the tidal forces fought to suck them in, causing the whole ship to shake violently.

"Put them to max! We need every scrap of thrust we can get!" Rong-Arya ordered.

"But the resonance in engine four…" Striker began before seeing the look in his captain's face and he quickly shoved the throttle all the way open.

For a time the _Stiletto _hung in space upon a pillar of blue plasma, struggling for every centimetre of ground as it tried to climb out of the massive gravity well that was devouring the Borg down to the last drone and setting the entire nebula on fire, the whole thing rattling as the tides and the number four tried to shake apart. Something had to give.

With a bang and a massive lurch the number four engine failed, the flaw in its construction that had prevented it from ever being properly powered up causing the entire thing to nearly come loose and force an automatic shut off. Unfortunately for half a second the thrust was completely unbalanced and the _Stiletto _went into a massive spin before the other engines cut off as well.

"_Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…_" Someone screamed out.

Struggling to get strapped into their chair, Rong-Arya cried out, "_**All power to the Gellar field! Maybe we can ride it out like a Warp storm!**__"_

Spinning wildly, the _Stiletto _plunged into the rift and towards shores unknown.


	31. Interrogation

**Chapter Thirty: Interrogation**

Lars sat quietly in the interrogation room of the small safe house Heaven had prepared for individuals like him, the ones who they really wanted to talk to but didn't trust to actually bring beyond the Gates of Heaven. It was the sort of thing usually used for potential demonic informants and the like, but Lars was most definitely the most unusual guest they had ever featured within their halls.

For one, they had never met someone who could be so polite and yet so utter unhelpful. Repeatedly he had given them the basic facts that he knew, but he had also repeatedly stated that he had absolutely no intention of getting involved in their politics and he would only help them in a way that would help him get home presuming he did not lead them back to his home.

The most frustrating bit though was that all of their psychic probes revealed him to be honest in his statements and completely terrifying to get too close to mentally. They could _hear _the other minds subsumed within him if they tried to get anything more than surface scans, something that frightened them all to their core for such a thing should be impossible, and yet here he was.

Many advocated killing him outright as a threat to Creation. Only the fact that he held so many souls within him and they had no idea how to get them out safely prevented them from taking action.

Finally, after several days, Lars said, "Look… its not that I can't see where you are all coming from, but I think we can all agree that as much as I scare you, you all scare me. I can feel it in all of you, the surging power to rewrite reality if you want, and as much as that scares me, if I lead you back to my home, the damage that could result scares me more."

It was an enlightening moment for some of those looking on. He was an Outsider, something that did not belong, something anathema to the order they had crafted, to the structure of the universe they knew so well. He had acknowledged the fact that he required the consumption of mortal souls to perpetuate his own existence and had volunteered to have this nature hoisted upon him. And yet despite the feeling of unease they felt around him, he was behaving just like a man trying to protect his family.

Which was why on the fifth day, a very confused Keiichi Morisato found himself in the little white interrogation room across from Lars.

"Well _this _is interesting," Lars commented.

"I uh… I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do here," Keiichi said.

Grinning, Lars said, "You're here to talk to me Keiichi-san. It's not a bad tactic really, if a bit sloppy. See, in this session I'm probably going to learn more from you than you or your friends will learn from me, but since you're an amateur and a mortal, I won't be able to get much of substance out of you. The point though is that over several sessions they hope that you will develop a rapport with me and thus I will be freer with my words."

Keiichi blinked and looked at the two way mirror helplessly.

"Oh relax man, to a certain degree I'm going to let it work, partly because I wouldn't mind hearing a good story or two, partly because I know from working with you that you're a good man," Lars replied.

"I wouldn't say that…" Keiichi began before being cut off.

"No. Shut up now. You are a _good man_, emphasis on both parts. I've met a lot of people in my life, and I know the difference between good and evil, even if where I come from the distinctions are significantly more muddled than here. You are kind and patient and you somehow have the heart of a goddess. A freaking _goddess_. And not the kind like I have with the thrones of skulls, but an actual glowing with holy light goddess. Unless the basic standards of manhood around here involving eating armed thermonuclear warheads and farting kittens while banging a harem of supermodels, I'm fairly certain you qualify as having balls of solid titanium in the manliness department," Lars told Keiichi with more passion than the young man was used to seeing.

By the time Lars had finished ranting Keiichi's face was bright red as he knew that Belldandy was watching through the glass to make sure nothing happened to him. He _really _hoped Urd wasn't watching as she would definitely bring that up later.

"It's nothing really, I…" Keiichi began again.

"Live with a _goddess_. Listen, I know it might be different here, but where I come from _that's a huge freaking deal_. Do you know how much power she carries around with her? Well, I'm a psychic, and it's like looking at the sun. And she freaking _loves _you, with every inch of her being. If you got a girl who loved you that much and she was mortal, I would punch you out of principle for being such a magnificent bastard. But no, you had to go one higher and get the girl with not just a beautiful body and soul, but administrative access over the _universe_. The fact that you're not strutting about like a peacock about the fact that you have the love of Belldandy-sama actually makes me angry, because you're just that _good_. Gah!" Lars ranted. He then put his head in his hand in irritation and said, "Sorry… sorry. I got carried away. I'm not really angry at you."

Keiichi looked at the mirror and asked, "Did one of you threaten Lars-san psychically?"

Shaking his hand, Lars said, "No, but thank you for your concern. My wife was just telling me to shut up because I was scaring the boy. Sorry. I was really angrier with myself than anything."

"What's… what's wrong Lars-san?" Keiichi asked.

Frowning a bit, Lars slumped down into his chair and looked to be choosing his words carefully for a moment before he said, "I look at you and I remember how angry I was with myself after my wife died. I was out fishing when a massive explosion flash melted Antarctica. The tidal waves and rapidly rising water levels devastated coastal cities across the planet, including where we lived. I was more or less safe on my boat while she drowned. Afterwards, all I could think about was how little time I had with her, how little of our lives we had lived together. Then I see you, and how low your confidence is, and you _should _be living your life to the fullest. You should have the confidence to go up to the Pope and tweak his nose, not because you know you'll be bailed out, but because you should be just that full of life. How did you even get the _attention _of someone like Belldandy-sama?"

Keiichi rubbed the back of his neck in nervousness before he began. He told about how he had met Belldandy, and then it got going from there. For hours he just talked while Lars listened raptly, and every time someone tried to cut the conversation short Lars just held up a hand and said, "I'll talk more after this, please, let him continue."

Finally, after ending with the confrontation with Celestine a month or so back, Lars got up out of his chair, walked over to Keiichi, placed his hands on his shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, "_Balls. Of. Neutronium. _Kid, I don't know what you have in your head that is getting in your way, but seriously, _marry her_. Marry her, and make sweet, sweet love until the Grim Reaper himself taps you on the shoulder to let you know that you should take a break before overdoing it."

"But…" Keiichi began, embarrassed.

Shaking his head, Lars replied, "I don't want to hear any bullshit excuses. You could nut Kensuke Aida, one of two superhuman military commanders from my world, and he would just be like 'Damn, that's Keiichi Morisato; I don't want to mess with him!' because you are simply _that _bad ass. I know you don't think it, but you've stood up to gods and demons and told them to back off, and they _have_. You have nothing to be scared of. You love Belldandy and she loves you, stop messing around and just _say it!_"

"I…" Keiichi began again before Lars held up a hand and then walked back down to take a seat.

"Alright, you've talked my ear off, now its time for me to return the favour, and satisfy the interests of our hosts. Let me put it this way: where I come from, strength in all of its forms is extremely valued. We have a highly Darwinian society at times, and combat is common amongst individuals. Young boys in their early teens will often compete in gladiatorial death matches for the right to be chosen to be turned into genetically modified super soldiers. One group is a bunch of fanatics obsessed with bloodshed and taking the skulls of their enemies to appease their goddess. They're about two and a half to three metres tall, wear power armour adorned with kill trophies, and wield chainsaw _axes_, to list the _obvious _ways in which they are dangerous. _However_, if you told them your story, they would _bow _to you in awe and respect. There's another group of these soldiers whose idea of worshipping their goddess is to play host to just about every disease imagined and then simply deal with the pain to the point where stopping them involves incinerating the body. They would _saint _you for your ability to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds. Our _head deity _would probably try to adopt you into the family for simply being as awesome as you are. Pretty much the only guys who wouldn't grovel in amazement to you are the worshippers of our passion goddess who would be using very vulgar language to try and convince you to have large amounts of kinky sex with Belldandy-sama as often as possible. Of course, once you actually score with her, _then _they would be throwing the flowers at your feet. To put it simply, my culture is violent, crass, over-sexed, scheming, and some might say evil and you would be a celebrity there and you wouldn't have to change a thing about yourself, you are just that incredible. The words do not exist to express how much I am amazed by your compassion, tenacity, patience, humility, and capacity for love. Should I return home, my report will be, 'I have met the greatest man in the multiverse and his name is Keiichi Morisato, and we should be humbled to know his name.' That is all that needs to be said," Lars said with as much emphasis and sincerity he could muster.

Keiichi tried to stop the speech, tried to stop Lars' praise, but he felt transfixed by him. As much as he wanted to deny all the things said, Keiichi knew that Lars would be deeply disappointed in him if he tried to sell himself short again. Of all the people Keiichi had met, no one had ever heaped such praise on him, and as much as it felt undeserved, he could feel that Lars felt it was the truth.

"Kid, live your life," Lars said.

* * *

The next day, a very angry looking child deity kicked in the door to the interrogation room while brandishing her mallet and roared out, "WHAT DID YOU _DO?_"

She was then tackled from behind by the flustered members of the security detail, who dragged the young goddess to the ground in a pile of flailing limbs with much screaming.

Lars blinked twice before he replied, "Well _this _is a new tactic."

As the security gods hauled the young goddess to her feet, she spat out again, "What did you do to my big sister?" before the guards started to carry her out.

Making the connection to the stories Keiichi had said the previous day, Lars shouted out, "Wait! You're Skuld-sama, right?"

The guards paused and looked at one another for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, Skuld said, "Yes."

"If it's alright with you two, I'd like to talk to her," Lars said.

One of the guards said, "We'll talk to our superiors," before closing the door.

A few minutes later Skuld returned to the room, although this time disarmed and having a large degree of sulk mixed in with her righteous fury. One of the guards just glared at her before shutting the door.

"So I take it this has something to do with Keiichi-sama and Belldandy-sama's relationship and some of the, shall we say 'words' I used with him yesterday?" Lars asked.

"I _knew _you did this. For years now he's been trying to take my big sister away, and then I find out today that he and sister have been… _making out_," Skuld said in an absolutely aghast voice.

Lars' reaction was definitely not what she had expected, for Lars immediately launched out of his chair, punching the sky while shouting, "_YES!_" He then proceeded to begin dancing while chanting, "Go Keiichi! Go Keiichi!"

"It's not _funny!_" Skuld cried out, and Lars suddenly noticed that she was on the verge of tears.

Stopping his dance, Lars said, "Look… I've heard stories from Keiichi-sama about how you don't exactly approve of his relationship with your sister…"

"Oh yeah, take _his _side," Skuld pouted.

"…and while I'm normally something of a coward terrified of death, Keiichi-sama has inspired me to say this. You're a _bitch_. In fact, you're an absolutely selfish _cunt_," Lars finished.

Skuld's mouth was hanging open in utter shock at being called that.

Turning to the two way mirror, Lars added on as an aside, "Also, if your sister Urd is listening in, while your heart is definitely in the right place, you're a bitch too- although from descriptions you might take that as a compliment."

Turning back to the still stunned Skuld, Lars looked at her and said, "Belldandy _loves _Keiichi. Keiichi _loves _Belldandy. _They_ wantto be together. When you stand between them, it hurts _both _of them. I know my guards probably roll their eyes every time I get all effusive and hyperbolic of my praise of him, but the guy has earned the right to be happy with your sister. _Leave. Them. Alone!_"

Skuld _did _burst into tears now.

Lars winced and he said to no one in particular, "Okay! Okay! I'll apologize to the girl! But you know I've always been a bitter, blunt old sailor and my ascension to Chaos hasn't helped."

This caused Skuld to pause in her tears and look up. She asked, "Wait… did you just say 'chaos'?"

Lars pinched the brow of his nose and muttered, "Oh great Lars, you managed to go six whole days without mentioning the word 'Chaos' and _now _you blow it."

Rising from her seat, Skuld pointed an accusing finger at him and said, "We've had a _huge _number of bugs in Yggdrasil since you arrived, so many that I've been away almost non-stop debugging. Not only did you fill their minds with icky thoughts, but you made sure they would be unsupervised!"

Lars opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and then held up his hand in a stalling action.

Skuld looked at him funny before she asked, "What wicked plan do you have now?"

"I'm waiting for the situation to inevitably get worse. At this point something will come along placing me in some form of existence threatening peril and I will be forced to rise to the occasion or die whimpering," Lars explained.

"Are you insane?" Skuld asked.

"Yes, but it gives excellent insight into the workings of the universe. Wait for it… _wait for it…_"

The building was rocked by an explosion and someone cried out, "We're under attack!"

Lars wore a smug yet defeated look and said, "Told you so."


	32. Heroics

Double update today. Mostly because I can. And because I have school tomorrow and thus might not be able to post this in the morning.

**Chapter Thirty-one: Heroics**

"What's going on?" Skuld cried out in fear as further explosions rocked the building.

"The building is under attack by over a dozen different entities, nasty ones too. The majority are fairly low level, but two appear to be providing artillery support and are quite powerful and one is off the charts. All are quite spectacularly malevolent. I suppose that these are the demons that my interrogators kept asking about," Lars noted.

"How do you know that?" Skuld demanded suspiciously while glancing about in fear.

"I'm psychic, and all of them are glowing like black holes about to enter final evaporation. If I had to guess, I would say that Hell has found out about me and are leading a full scale assault. Unfortunately I don't think the guys here were prepared for something of this magnitude. I don't think they'll be able to evacuate me in time," Lars replied with a hint of sadness.

"We have to get out of here!" Skuld announced.

"That one entity I mentioned? Yeah, that one is more powerful than any being I've met so far, including your sisters," Lars replied.

"Hild…" Skuld breathed in horror. Facing the Demon Queen with her sisters was something that scared her, but _alone_, or worse yet, with an untrustworthy creep like Lars?

Getting up, Lars flipped the interrogation table onto its side and then kicked it against the far wall. With a sigh, he then grabbed Skuld by the collar and threw her behind the table.

"_What are you doing?_" Skuld screamed once she had recovered enough.

Shaking his head, Lars said, "Being an idiot. I appear to be Keiichi-sama's number two fan right now, and unfortunately if you get hurt that will cause a great deal of pain to his number one fan, Belldandy-sama, which will in turn cause him grief. I don't want that. Me… I'm nobody to you people. If I die… so what? If you die? Well, let's just say that I couldn't live with myself to see the faces of your friends and family after."

"What?" Skuld asked in confusion and growing horror.

"I'm going to make sure that the attackers don't notice you. So stay behind that table and don't come out until it's over, and hopefully you'll get away," Lars said sadly as he positioned himself in front of the door to the room.

"But… but…" Skuld began.

"No girl. The reason I called you a bitch is because you fail to look beyond your own selfish desires. Your sister loves you and always will, but she _also _loves Keiichi-sama, and if you force her to choose between the two of you, _you will lose_. Not because she loves Keiichi-sama more, but because forcing someone to choose between two loves is a sure fire way to drive them away. So hide under that table and let me do this as a favour to you and your family," Lars explained.

"But…" Skuld whimpered.

"**Hide girl. I don't want you to see this**," Lars stated in a weirdly echoing voice as his eyes began to cloud over and the temperature began to drop.

Skuld did indeed drop behind the table, partly because she was too scared to disobey and partly because she suddenly felt very ill. Still, she did manage to say, "Don't kill any of them… if you do you'll kill one of the gods."

There was a pause as the lights began to flicker and Lars replied, "**I won't **_**kill **_**anyone."**

It took a second for Skuld to realize why she was feeling so sick. She was a Norn, tasked with the maintenance of Yggdrasil, with the very integrity of reality. Normal magic, be it demonic or divine, involved the manipulation of the coding of the universe. But whatever Lars was doing was radically different. Instead of temporarily changing the local manifestation of the laws of the universe, he was essentially glaring at the laws of physics and making them run away in terror. It was not a pleasant feeling for a goddess like Skuld.

The lights went out and ice began to form on every surface, while the scent of the sea, of salt and fish guts, became overwhelming. Skuld then noticed the sounds of chains rattling and a low rhythmic thumping coupled with what sounded like barely audible chanting in a language she did not understand.

Then someone kicked in the door to the room, bringing a flood of light into the room.

Then the _screaming _started.

Skuld could only clutch at her head at the horror of the sounds. It was like a hundred voices all crying out as one, their throats filling with water, turning their screams into terrible gurgles that impossible refused to be silenced. It was as loud as a tsunami and as intricate as the play of foam across rocks in a storm. It keened and echoed and reverberated, a monstrous noise.

And that was _Lars_.

A second later two voices, the coarse and brutish throats of demons, joined into the horrible banshee wail, but their cries were ones of absolute terror, the squealing of frightened babes. A second later their screams were cut off by the sound of drywall shattering.

Skuld kept her eyes closed and her hands clamped about her ears.

* * *

Lars hated using this form. It wasn't _him_. No matter what deals he might have made, he refused to revel in the eldritch abomination style that so many other daemons preferred. He wanted to remain as human as possible.

And yet he had spent most of his human life terrified of death and now he had somehow got it in his head to challenge a Hell God to save the life of a bratty bitch all because she was related to someone who was in love with a guy he had just met. He had been warned that ascension to daemonhood would result in an increase in emotional response and impulsiveness, but this was just pushing it.

Lars was terrified. He wasn't a combat daemon, fuck; he wasn't even an infiltrator daemon. He was a minor _technical _daemon, a glorified radio operator. And not even the good kind of radio operator that served in the field and could call down fire from the sky, but a long range guy. He shouldn't be fighting the local equivalent of trained soldiers.

And yet, he did, instincts he did not even know he had coming to the fore. The gods had inherited millions of years of experience from the old deities, and ancient, primeval impulses began to take over. He could not take out the enemies all at once or in a fair fight, so he squeezed every advantage he had. For example, none of the grunts he had thus far fought had very good defences against a direct psychic assault, something that Lars was actually quite good at, considering that he had needed to have good broadcast skills to do his job.

Also, for demons, these guys did not seem to have much dealing with the whole cosmic horror aspect of life and thus it was quite possible to reduce them to weeping wrecks without having to rely on much psychic activity. If he could pick them off in ones or twos, he could neutralize the grunts and then make a run for it to try and draw the big powers away from Skuld. Who knew, he might even be able to flee outright.

Using his senses, he determined that there was a pair of grunts immediately below him, and that the floor was made from simple mortal building materials. Mustering his strength, he positioned himself and then plunged his hands down through the floor, and thus the ceiling. His limbs made from infinitely mutable Warp-stuff, they extended weirdly so that he had the reach to grab one of the demons by the head with his hands.

Of course, Lars' hands did not look remotely human, looking at a distance skeletal, but up close it was clear that they were crabs legs, with the thumbs actual pincers. Someone who really knew their _Decapoda _would actually identify the limbs as being quite similar to those of the Red King Crab. After all, fourteen of the souls within Lars had been fishermen who died harvesting that species.

Hauling up with a wail like a whale being tortured to death by a blender, Lars picked the demon off his feet and slammed him through the ceiling. Towering over the creature, Lars bent over, his pallid, soggy face a shark toothed smile before his whole head split open at the middle to reveal a gaping maw, Lars' tongue replaced by a set of grasping cephalopod arms with a snapping beak at the centre. Replacing the suckers on the tangle of arms were dozens of tiny lamprey mouths filled with tiny yellow teeth. As Lars' horrid visage descended upon the demon's head, frigid sea water dripped on its eyes and into its screaming mouth.

Lars dropped the demon quickly; the creature going into severe psychic shock as Lars drained him of a huge amount of emotion, fear specifically, leaving a shattered mind behind in his wake. He then rolled out of the way as the other demon on the floor below started shooting with some sort of magical weapon.

Lars could feel that powerful mind that was surely the leader of this operation starting to take direct control over the movement of the troops. Lars had very little doubt that he was being tracked what with all of the energy he was throwing about with his psychic attacks.

Thus it was time to run.

Barrelling through a wall, Lars made a beeline towards the nearest window before abruptly stopping and ripping out a chunk of the floor, dropping down a level, and heading in the opposite direction. He could feel the confusion in the psychic probes sent his way. Not only was his mind undoubtedly alien and hard to read, but his physical actions were hard to predict.

This was because Lars honestly had no idea what he was doing either. He just kept moving, randomly picking a new heading at random intervals. He would punch through walls and floors, even ceilings so as to move up a floor. He would attack demons or run from them without any rhyme or reason, just because he could.

Only when the enemy was scattered all through the building well away from Skuld did Lars move on to phase two, which involved running as fast and as hard as he could down the first hallway he found towards a window big enough to fit through. He then jumped through said window. He wasn't exactly sure _where _he was, but he was fairly certain from the topology he had so far seen that he was in a large building.

With glass streaming about him, Lars noted that he appeared to be on the sixtieth floor of a downtown office building. For a brief moment a burst of animal instinct from the human part of him told him that he was about to die, but the fact that he had no true physical form quickly overrode that fear.

Sure, he _did _splatter against the pavement, but he quickly pulled himself back together to the amazement of hundreds of onlookers before running for all he was worth towards the nearest alley while trying to mask his psychic signature. He severely doubted he was going to get away, but at least he accomplished what he set out to do.

* * *

Skuld wandered about in mild shock, surveying the damage as Valkyries and war gods secured the building. Lars had ripped apart much of the area, and while Hild, who had been confirmed in the attack, had pulled out most of her demons, one of them had been found, covered in near freezing sea water and rocking back and forth catatonically, missed in the rapid evacuation. So far psychic probing had… not been pleasant.

All of the gods were disturbed by the implications. They had known that Lars was alien, that he was put together in ways that the Almighty never would have allowed, but he had been so calm and peaceful when they had talked to him, and he had never raised a finger against them.

And yet, when provoked, he had done this, despite claiming that he didn't care for their conflicts. It didn't seem to fit.

Skuld slumped down and knew. He could have waited quietly, _would _have waited quietly for the fight to be decided, if not for his need to protect _her_. And his reason for protecting her? His reason for doing all of these terrible things on her behalf?

_Keiichi._

The bane of Skuld's existence for years, and he had saved her for Keiichi's sake. He said that he respected Keiichi too much for him to be hurt by the hurt Belldandy would feel if Skuld got hurt because Hell was after him. It was a complicated chain, but it _hurt_. Hurt because this monster, this soul eating abomination, cared more for others than she did.

Because now that she saw this she realized that she _had _been selfish all these years trying to keep Belldandy to herself.

Skuld began to cry.

And she wished that Lars was safe somewhere.

* * *

While hanging upside down, Lars noted, "Well _that _didn't work."

"It almost did," Hild replied with a shrug and a broad smile.


	33. Dilemma

**Chapter Thirty-two: Dilemma**

It had been months since Kyon had heard from the beings of Chaos, but he had been stewing about it since then. Haruhi was such a handful, and the words of the 'avatars' still echoed in his head. How long could he keep taking the high road with Haruhi?

Thus, when the next card requesting a meeting arrived in his mail, Kyon was not surprised that it arrived, just surprised that it had taken so long. What were those creatures plotting now?

Arriving at the same hotel as last time, Kyon was led by a bellhop not to the restaurant but to the penthouse suite, which was pretty freaky. When he knocked on the door, he heard a distant, "It's open, come on in."

Stepping tentatively inside, Kyon discovered a place where the decorations on the wall probably cost more than what his family made in an entire year. After taking off his shoes, he wandered forward carefully, giving everything inside plenty of room. Even if it wasn't filled with psychopathic monster, Kyon would never take Haruhi here for fear of racking up hundreds of millions of yen worth of damage that she would somehow find away to foist off on him.

"We're by the pool, just turn a bit to your right," a male voice, Shinji, said. Following the directions given and the origination point of the sound, Kyon found himself stepping through an arch into a massive room with a full sized swimming pool encased in the trappings of what looked like an Italian Renaissance grotto or some such elegant location, complete with stained glass windows and a exquisitely carved angels and nymphs acting as fountains to circulate the water in the pool.

"You like?" Shinji called out, and Kyon noted that the male avatar appeared to be sitting in a pool chair, carved out of stone of course, facing away from Kyon so that only his arms and the top of his head were visible.

Approaching cautiously, Kyon said, "It's… impressive."

"I know. We actually had the hotel remodelled to suit our tastes," Shinji replied.

"You…" Kyon's question died on his lips as he got close enough to see past the back of the chair… and the state of dress of both Shinji and the red headed girl with her head concealing his lap.

Asuka raised her head from what she was doing to say, "Hi," before going back to work.

Panicking, Kyon tried to run only to back up into someone larger than him with very soft features but the sort of imposing strength from the impact that told Kyon that he wasn't going anywhere.

"Oh do relax Kyon-san, we're not going to do anything untoward to you, we're just trying to freak you out because… well mostly because it's funny. Plus from our point of view it's nice to enjoy the good things in life," Shinji stated as Kyon found himself marched towards one of the lounge chairs and ordered to sit. Once he was sitting and he found that he was quite firmly rooted in place, the as of yet unseen figure sat down, revealing to Kyon that he had bumped into a _very _naked Misato.

He was now flanked on either side by naked people who were the avatars of cosmic horrors from another universe.

Smiling broadly at him while picking up a bottle of oil, Misato said, "Oral sex or a hand job to relax you during this meeting?"

"_No!_" Kyon cried out in horror.

Raising his eyebrows, Shinji said, "Trust me when I say 'Your loss'."

"Why have you brought me here?" Kyon demanded in a near panic at what was going on around him.

"Well, for one, we find the sex education courses in your school deplorable and we feel that in your situation that is simply unacceptable," Misato replied as she oiled herself up.

"The other, and rather more important one, is that we have some things important to you that you have to find out about. Also, since it looks like you're getting close to having your panic overwhelm your fear of us, Rei, make sure he doesn't move," Shinji said.

Walking up from behind the chair, Rei, also naked, sat down on top of Kyon and promptly went to sleep, pinning a now epically nervous Kyon in place as he tried not to move.

"Oh relax, they're just tits. Plus you can literally do _anything _to Rei and she won't stop smiling. Seriously, if you want to get some experience in, Rei's a great starter for figuring out the basics," Misato encouraged.

Kyon could not say anything he was so shocked.

"Now that we have your full attention, we should get on to the point of this meeting. In essence, what is happening right now is that there is going to be a… _disturbance_. Something went awry, and there is, for lack of a better term, a shockwave approaching. It will arrive in a few days and last for about an hour or two. During that time, _interesting _things will happen," Shinji explained.

Kyon heard all of this, but the fact that he had a naked girl sleeping on top of him prevented him from forming a coherent reply.

"Thus we all need Haruhi distracted for about a week for the majority of the furor to die down. And we mean _really _distract her, such that… wait… ah. Anyway, we each have a couple theories about how to best go about it, although most of these will be relegated to a 'back up plan' status in your mind," Shinji said.

Her work finished, Asuka wriggled up until she was sprawled across Shinji and said, "My first suggestion was to simply knock her out for a week. One blow to the back of the head when she's not suspecting it and she's out. I can make sure not to kill her too."

"The obvious flaw to that plan is that she could still possibly exercise her powers while asleep, and we don't want her to create a fantasy world that becomes reality," Shinji said.

"And, let's face it, you probably don't want her knocked out," Misato added on. She then said, "I bet you could guess my suggestion. A week long orgy, with us joining in at your discretion. We keep Haruhi's legs so close to her head she can't think for days on end. We have some incredible drugs that will give males and females inhuman endurance and sensation. Plus, if you want, we can show you how to make every nerve in the female erogenous zones work to your advantage."

Rei muttered sleepily, "I said we should just give her the flu and all of you can take care of her for a week. She'll remain in her house and shouldn't notice any of the weirdness. You'll have to deal with Haruhi and cabin fever, but you already know how to deal with that."

That, surprisingly, was the first option Kyon actually liked. Somewhat.

"Me, I said vacation," Shinji replied.

Kyon finally had acclimatized to having Rei lying on him long enough that he said, "It's not summer break though."

"Huh… would you look at the time? Your school should have flooded from a fault in the fire extinguisher system by now. The damage will be pretty severe, enough to shut down everything for about a week or two while clean up occurs. You have time to go on vacation now," Shinji replied.

Kyon's jaw dropped open.

"So anyway, how would you like to go to Canada? A private jet all the way to Vancouver where you will spend three nights with accommodations at the Hotel Vancouver before getting on a train to Banff and spending two nights in the Chateau Lake Louise. It's absolutely beautiful this time of year as its autumn and the trees are changing colour. You'll then travel across the country in style to Toronto over the course of two nights in an extremely comfortable and luxurious train car. You will spend three days in Toronto as guests of the Fairmont Royal York before moving on to Montreal and the Chateau Frontenac for three days before flying back to Japan. It will be quite the adventure, with plenty of opportunity for exploration, excitement, and dare I say it, _romance_?" Shinji explained in detail.

"And how exactly would we do that?" Kyon asked.

"Surprise, someone entered the SOS Brigade into the Canadian Grand Railway Hotels Tour contest, which just happens to have not existed until you approve of the idea. And don't worry about passports or the fact that you're all minors, that has all been taken care of," Shinji noted.

"What about our parents?" Kyon asked.

"Well, only you, Haruhi, and Itsuki need to worry about that sort of thing, and Itsuki with his contacts in the organization is very good at arranging these sorts of things. That said; your parents and Haruhi's both just won contests at work. Paris and Kenya beckon, respectively. Arrangements for siblings have also been organized. I'm very good at planning these sorts of things," Shinji explained.

"How are you doing all of this?" Kyon asked in disbelief.

"Our current net worth is 4.2 billion USD and we have controlling interests in the companies your parents work in. Why do you think they've suddenly had their careers accelerated so nicely?" Shinji explained.

Kyon's eyes bulged out in shock and horror and he asked, "How did you get that money?"

"We used telekinesis and pachinko to turn a few hundred yen collected off the streets to into enough money that telekinesis, precognition, and roulette let us set up that first meeting with you and we had enough funds to begin playing the stock market as day traders for a few weeks before we started aggressively leveraging what we had into corporate acquisitions and mergers," Misato explained.

"My favourite parts are the hostile takeovers and subduing entrenched middle management. Who knew corporate politics could be so violent?" Asuka said with a grin.

"You just _had _to earn yourself the nickname of 'The Axe', didn't you?" Shinji said with an exasperated sigh.

"It's _hilarious _to make a forty-seven year old salary man break down weeping because a girl younger than his own daughter is making him beg to keep his job," Asuka cackled.

"Don't forget rooting out all the nepotism, cronyism, and patronage appointments so that we could replace them with our own people. It's the best part of any turnover of power: replacing one form of corruption with another," Misato pointed out.

"Wait… wait… you all _control _where my parents work?" Kyon asked in stunned horror.

"Yes," all four avatars replied as one.

"You deserve the good things in life for having to deal with Haruhi. Right now we're making sure your parents have nice, cushy jobs and lots of money. We also control your school board, and a couple other things," Misato replied.

A sudden chill ran up Kyon's spine and he asked, "So I don't really have any choice in these matters, do I?"

"Well, you could leap off this building if you really don't want to choose or come up with your own way to distract Haruhi, but if you're concerned that we're going to hold the well being of your friends and family over you, don't worry. While yes, these acts have given us leverage over you, such leverage really only exists in theory as we have no intention of punishing you that way. Instead, think of it as we think of it; a reward for good work in our eyes," Shinji explained.

"Just as we're all willing to give you or any other members of the SOS Brigade a reward for your good work," Misato said seductively.

"I really…" Kyon said.

"What do you want to do Kyon? Do you want to take the help from creatures friendly towards you and your goals but who you don't consider 'ethical'? We can give you a list of our investment portfolio and some of our corporate actions and you can look over them. You'll find our actions are well above the basic standards for corporate ethics and responsibility, and we have in fact been attempting to improve the quality of life for all of our employees, all joking of 'new forms of corruption' aside. The only problem you have is that we are extra-dimensional horrors with incomprehensible agendas and rumours of abhorrent treatment of our subjects. That is not true," Shinji stated.

"It's our _enemies _who need to worry," Asuka added on cheerily.

"So really, the question you have to ask yourself is this: do you want to accept what we have to offer you and move our relationship up from 'uneasy neutrality' to open alliance, or reject us entirely and make yourself an enemy," Misato said.

"Align with evil out of fear of what it will do and hope of the rewards it will bring, or reject it and face the consequences," Kyon stated.

Nodding, Shinji said, "Yes. But question has two questions behind it you must answer. The first is, are we truly 'evil'? The second is, even if we are, how noble are you? Additionally, I think you really should get a sample of what 'selling out' will get you. Girls?"

Giggling, all of the females scrambled about until they were all resting their heads in Kyon's lap, their faces looking up at him eagerly, much to Kyon's chagrin. Then Shinji took up position behind Kyon and said, "Also, for added incentive, let me point out some things."

Rei's outline blurred and then her appearance changed to that of Mikuru. Naked. Lying on top of Kyon.

"Quiet and accepting, she will go along with just about anything. Will enjoy just cuddling and will never speak ill of you. Cute and pleasant. Excellent for beginners," Shinji said with a sinister smile.

Then Misato's figure rippled and changed to that of Yuki. Again, naked.

"Confident and knowledgeable. Has high standards, but is a superb teacher so if you follow along with her you will learn much. An advanced subject for once you have sufficient confidence to not embarrass yourself," Shinji detailed out.

Finally Asuka transformed into the form of Haruhi.

"Wild and untamed, extremely demanding and will be abusive and obnoxious if you screw up. Still, a wild ride if you have the courage and skill to go for it, a challenge as she will try to dominate you if you show any sign of temerity. Definitely a master level girl," Shinji said.

The girls were now starting to move higher up on Kyon, their hands searching about, making it hard to think. Leaning over, Shinji said, "So what do you say Kyon? Do you follow the noble path and leave here, or do you come with us? Don't forget that you still haven't busted open Haruhi's abuse of the Computer Club. Don't forget that you have stood aside so many times when she starts to 'play' with poor Mikuru. Don't forget you kept all of those pictures instead of deleting them because you couldn't bear to erase such nice cleavage. Don't forget all the other times you have taken the low path. Now is the time to join us, or leave here and make yourself a hypocrite, or leave here and take up the burdens of following the high path at all times. So, what will it be Kyon? What will it be?"

Kyon opened his mouth to reply.


	34. Consolidation

**Chapter Thirty-three: Consolidation**

"The Ori have been too quiet since the battle of the supergate," Mitchell noted sombrely while looking over reports in the commissary as he idly ate his breakfast.

"Our agents report that they are attempting to downplay the magnitude of their losses. Many Priors who were active in this galaxy were aboard the destroyed ships and their disappearance has produced much fear and uncertainty amongst their converted populations. They are thus attempting consolidation of their assets before continuing expansion," Teal'c noted as he sat down with his own tray opposite Mitchell.

Picking at his scrambled eggs, Daniel said, "There's also the fact that by all accounts they lost the majority of their native army in the battle and are probably having problems back home."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

"What I don't get is why they haven't just used their Death Star to take out all majority points of resistance yet," Mitchell asked while flipping through the report.

"In size and effect the Ori super weapon is closer to an _Eclipse_-class dreadnought than a Death Star," Teal'c pointed out helpfully.

Mitchell blinked a few times before Daniel said, "Teal'c enjoys the expanded universe as well as the films."

"Sometimes. Recent works I have found sub-standard," Teal'c admitted.

"Moving on…" Mitchell noted.

Shrugging, Carter said, "Long range scanning by the Asgard indicate that the Ori super weapon is currently in close orbit about the black hole they created, in all likelihood refuelling. It probably only has one or two shots for its main gun at full power. It would also explain why they haven't ventured out with their other ships yet. That close to a gravity-well their ship would be extremely vulnerable to bombardment, and the loss of it would be a massive blow."

"So it's just a matter of time before they get their act together and begin again," Mitchell said pessimistically.

"Then we had better use what time we have to prepare for them," Daniel pointed out.

"Indeed. Perhaps that mysterious ship will return and we can learn who they are," Teal'c suggested.

Glancing down at the plans she had been asked to review from the treaties being discussed elsewhere on the base, Carter said, "If we're lucky we'll have a few surprises they won't be expecting."

The plans laid out before Carter were for making a factory to produce something called ceramite.

* * *

The Tok'ra had felt bad about betraying the trust of their allies by hacking into the Tau'ri database, but with the stakes they were running, stepping on a few toes was better than letting multiple galaxies fall into ruin and the deaths of billions. They would apologize later.

"I must admit a degree of distaste at your plan Anise," Vel'nak, a Tok'ra in need of a new host and loyal to the new path Anise had set for the Tok'ra.

"I would be lying if I disagreed with you, but this will be a necessary evil," Anise replied as the equipment was prepared. "Also, how is your host, Taros?"

"Fading. I am having a degree of difficulty maintaining bodily functions at this point," Vel'nak admitted sadly. He had been blended with Taros for almost three hundred years and unfortunately the man had developed a neurodegenerative disorder that Vel'nak had been helpless to stop. For the past three years Vel'nak could only sit by as Taros' mind disappeared, one of the most horrible experiences a Tok'ra could have.

"To what is left of him, let him know that the end is almost here," Anise said warmly as the next host for Vel'nak was wheeled in.

Vel'nak sighed and said, "This feels too much like what the Goa'uld would do."

"I know," Anise replied. "But it is a far better thing that we do it than they."

"Agreed," Vel'nak said before his aged body was leaned forward by attendants towards the confused and struggling subject. He added on as an aside, "If this doesn't work, let it be known that I regret nothing and I can die happy knowing that the Goa'uld were toppled in my lifetime."

Taros' eyes then closed for the last time, the host body rapidly dying as the symbiote left it. The worm-like symbiote shot out of the mouth and into the forced open one of the restrained test subject. There were a few moments of thrashing and struggling until the eyes flashed. The mouth clamps were removed and Vel'nak said in a weirdly modulated tone, "**Strange… the neural architecture is somewhat different, but it is possible to dominate the subject. Ugh… I never thought I would speak those words.**"

Anise then took a few minutes to run some checks with safe words and such to make sure that it really was Vel'nak before removing all of the restraints except for the wrist and ankle cuffs.

Having figured out the body a little better, Vel'nak said in a mostly normal tone, "While I understand the necessity of these, I do wish they were unnecessary."

"In time, once we can trust that you are in full control, we will remove them. For now however, we must ask how you feel," Anise replied.

"Hungry, although that is to be expected. I have a handle over it, primarily because I am flooding the subject's mind with endorphins relating to the pleasure response of feeding, severely damping the hunger instinct. I think I may be able to win him over to our point of view with time. Obviously if we starve to death we might find that a hard time," Vel'nak stated.

"What about the immune system? Is it giving you any trouble?" Anise asked as probes were hooked up now that the restraints had been removed.

"Some. It is more robust than what I am used to, but I already have it mostly suborned and I do not think it is a threat. Of course, I will come in for further check-ups," Vel'nak replied.

"Good. Good," Anise said before she asked, "Do you think you would be ready to try today, or should we wait?"

Vel'nak considered for a moment before replying, "The chance that this could kill me remains the same whether we do it today or tomorrow. Let me try now, before I get too comfortable in this body."

Nodding, Anise said, "Bring in the next subject."

Shackled and stripped bare, the captured Wraith warrior was brought into the experimental room while the cuff around Vel'nak's right hand was remotely released. Flexing it out a few times as the warrior was shoved into close range, Vel'nak said, "Well, this is going to be interesting."

Striking forward, Vel'nak, the first ever Tok'ra with a Wraith host body, began to feed.

In the shadows, a Black Pharaoh of Tzintchi, whimsically named Epimetheus in contrast to his 'brother' in the Milky Way, watched on and observed while he simultaneously looked over the design specs for the Kull Warrior armour. So far the only change was that the palm of the right hand had been left exposed.

More were to come though.

* * *

The crew of the _Eventide _watched sadly as their sensors detected the storm close in about the universe where they had been forced to retreat. The storm was a massive, surging dimensional dislocation that had swallowed up the only path to rescuing Vita.

They had a window to run through, a chance to try and get their friend and family member back, but a red eyed Hayate had decided that they couldn't take the risk. Their first and only engagement in Wild Space had nearly killed them all. They needed back up.

They also needed to get their stories straight.

"I left her to those monsters," Nanoha kept muttering angrily when it looked like no one was listening. Everyone had heard her say it already. Everyone knew it wasn't her fault. Hayate had given her a direct order to retreat even after she had heard of Vita's status.

Fate on the other hand was having a hard time just accepting that her sister was alive, and her mother had somehow been transformed into the AI for an Intelligent Device, let alone the fact that her sister had been transformed into some sort of soul eating monster willing to slaughter people at the slightest insult.

Then there were the conflicting reports between what Nanoha had experienced and what had happened in space. Nanoha was insisting that the defenders of the planet were the evil ones, while Hayate knew that the people attacking the planet had been the aggressive ones while the defenders in space had actively helped the _Eventide_.

Quite simply put, they had stumbled into a nasty political situation and despite their best efforts to remain neutral they had ended up picking a side… only it looked like they had somehow managed to piss off at least two of them. Out of self defence.

They needed to contact the TSAB and request assistance. They needed more firepower, which meant more ships, and they needed politicians to smooth over the disaster.

They also needed psychiatrists as the fact that Vita was missing was putting an incredible strain upon the morale of the crew.

Hayate asked Yuuno, "How long will the storm last?"

Frowning, the young scholar replied, "From our perspective? Weeks to months. From theirs? It could be anything. The time could pass in the blink of an eye and we can return almost immediately. Or… well, absolute worst case scenario, the universe could be cold and dead by the time we get back there. That's not likely, but there is a remote possibility of that much time distortion."

"So Vita could be trapped there for years?" Hayate asked, her guts twisting up over the fate of the girl she had long ago come to see as her sister.

"Quite possibly," Yuuno answered sadly. He then sighed and said, "Also, we know that Chaotic Space is open and that Alicia and Precia were both oddly affected. If they came from Chaotic Space they very well could have returned there with Vita… in which case I have no idea what will happen."

"We'll get her back," Hayate resolved.

* * *

Captain Picard stared down dumbly at the proposals he had written. After Q had returned him to the _Enterprise_, waiting anxiously outside the Damocles Nebula for word from their captain or those who had taken him, Picard had led the Federation in doing a more thorough dig of the Chaos base around Syracuse. Very little technology had been left behind, but the cultural insights were incredible when viewed through the lens of what Q had led Picard to understand.

Picard now knew that if the Federation were to survive, it had to change to meet this threat and all of the others opened up by the destruction the _Stiletto _had caused. Unfortunately, Picard was not the only one to raise his voice that things must change.

So now he sat here in San Francisco, data pad in hand, waiting for his turn to speak before the Federation Council to tell them what he thought had to be done to ensure the continued survival and prosperity of the Federation.

Already the proposals had been made by others to increase the budget to Starfleet, to militarize, and even to begin removing freedoms in the interests of security. All of the standard arguments made to frightened masses of people in times of crisis, all of the paths that led wounded democracies into the dark realms of dictatorships. All of the things that Picard had once thought impossible in the Federation, but now he realized were far closer to reaching fruition than he had realized.

Someone said something to him, and Picard remotely realized that he was being told it was time to make his speech.

Picard stepped out into the chamber, surrounded by representatives from all hundred fifty member worlds. Walking slowly forward, he took centre stage and waited to be formally acknowledged before beginning. Clearing his throat, Picard said, "Greetings representatives of the Federation. I come to you today bearing… ill news. For the past four months I have been studying the ruins of the base called New Syracuse, abandoned by the group called Chaos after it was heavily damaged in a Borg attack. An attack I myself was involved in, my room partially collapsing and leaving me trapped for two days before I managed to dig my way out. But I do not come before you to tell you what happened to me, I come before you to tell you what I have learned, and how we can use it to stop these beings of Chaos should they return."

There was some sagacious nodding amongst the various members, before Picard said, "My colleagues before me have come before you asking that we devote more resources to military spending, and while we need ships to protect us from those already here that threaten us, I am afraid that it won't be enough to stop Chaos when they return."

Now there were murmurs of dissent within the crowd. This was not what they wanted to hear.

Holding up a hand, Picard said, "Military might alone cannot stop them. Their leaders are their gods, and this works for them because their gods talk back to them. The leaders of Chaos are transcendent beings with the knowledge of the universe. Their technology is thousands of years beyond our own, and the ship that left behind a debris cloud of hundreds of destroyed Borg cubes was listed as a _frigate _in their registers. We cannot stop them with military might alone. We cannot stop them with military might _at all_. The Briar Patch, containing the fortified forward base for the Borg in the Alpha Quadrant _no longer exists_. Representatives, the Borg nearly destroyed the entire Federation a decade ago with a single cube. A single ship of Chaos did to the Borg what the Borg did to us ten times over, a hundred times over. No number of ships, no amount of technology can stop them. These are simple facts, things that anyone can see with their eyes, not the ravings of a madman."

"Then how can we stop them?" Someone shouted out.

"We can't," Picard stated before he said, "All we can do is convince them that we are not worth it. From examinations of their culture, all they respect is strength. We cannot hope to match them in military strength or scientific strength, so we must best them elsewhere. We must best them in cultural strength. We must show them that we are better people than them, that to destroy us would be to make the universe a darker place. They are violent and savage, but they have tales of great respect and reverence towards those who have the courage to take the high path when surrounded by factors that would lead them down darker ways. They feel that if selling your nobility does not lead you to power almighty, it is not worth it. But right now, they do not view us as morally superior to them."

There was rumbling of discontent. Already there would be those who would see him as a defeatist and a coward, willing to sell out the Federation for a chance at continued survival. Picard would weather the slings and barbs though to protect all the peoples of the Federation from the dangers within and without.

"What do they view as nobility? Surprisingly, the same things we do, for their tales tell a time when they were more like us in the past. Justice, freedom, compassion, and tolerance; these are not alien concepts to them. What makes them alien to us is that that they view such things equally with rage, anarchy, lust, and despair. They are intensely emotional beings, but their emotion grants them strengths that we cannot imagine. In the Federation, we have all, from humans to Vulcans to Andorians and all the other species in between, walled off our emotions in deference to the cold logic of living together. _Chaos hates that_. So long as we live like that, they will see us as weak, a target, and so long as we are a target, we cannot win against them."

The crowd was growing agitated, the Vulcans especially, although of course unless you knew them they would seem the least upset by Picard's words.

"Like the Klingons, they value honour and glory… but that would involve challenging them to a fight, something that I have already said that we cannot win. Like the Romulans, they enjoy twisted plots and conspiracies… but they have plans that span millions of years, so we cannot hope to compete in that arena. There is only one place where we can make them respect us: the guardian. The guardian of the weak, who uses whatever strength is available to draw a line in the sand, no matter how hopeless the situation. This is what started the war. They saw us, with all our technology and science, sitting aside while an entire planet with Bronze Age people died, and they grew enraged. The only way to cool that anger, to turn their greedy eyes away from us, is to become the one thing they will respect us for: the guardian of the galaxy," Picard entreated to the crowd.

Someone cried out, "But that would violate the Prime Directive!"

Now was time to say the words he had been dreading. Picard nodded and said, "I know. But I believe that the Prime Directive was founded on yet more fundamental values, values that stated that you cannot simply tell a person how to live, that people must be free to make their own choices, make their own mistakes, and to learn. But if we wish to continue to hold those values of freedom and justice we must not be devoured by these monsters. If we wish to survive, we must restructure how we deal with others, we must remember that the Federation was founded on the dream of peace and prosperity _for all_. As it stands now, the Prime Directive excludes billions from this peace and prosperity. If we wish to survive, we must change how we view the intent of the Prime Directive, to the point that it may be necessary to scrap it all together."

The council chambers exploded into shouting.


	35. Pretrial

**Chapter Thirty-four: Pre-trial**

The past few months since Halloween had been strange, to say the least. Aside from the regular dangers of the Hellmouth, there had also been the internal changes that had required a great deal of coping to deal with, resulting in some remarkable, and some terrible, changes to the youths Giles had watched over.

On the decidedly more remarkable side was Willow, for whom the memories of the assassin had, once she learned to accept them, given her a whole new perspective and confidence in life. Willow had learned to accept the fact that she was Willow, and no one else, a concept many people spent their whole lives struggling to learn. She now had a sort of inner peace that reflected in all of the things she did, a centre of absolute control. Her studies, be they academic or magical, had improved incredibly from their already great position, and there had been other changes too. She had, in practice sessions with the others, developed the poise and grace of a dancer… or rather an assassin, but it was much nicer to think of her as a dancer.

It was little surprise that she had already attracted a boyfriend, a quiet young man with the name of Oz who was the lead guitarist of a local band. Their relationship was rapidly drawing the young man into the world of the night, but he seemed to accept it with a frightening degree of stoicism and laconic wit.

On the somewhat less remarkable part of the scale, there was Buffy. While Giles had initially been thrilled with her new found devotion to duty and learning about all of the dangers of the world, his enthusiasm had quickly been tempered by the fact that Buffy's newfound focus included a newfound ruthless demeanour. Buffy now wanted to spare no expense when it came to killing vampires and demons. While Giles had managed to talk her out of trying to acquire military grade heavy weaponry, although the flamethrowers idea had been quite the argument, she had managed to talk him into obtaining arbalests to replace the regular crossbows they had been using.

She vowed to upgrade to large calibre firearms and explosive ammunition once it became practical to do so.

Then, deep in the terrible side of things, there was Xander. Xander was handling his situation astonishingly well, but unfortunately his situation was beyond what he could handle. Since Halloween, he had grown pale and twitchy, always on the verge of exploding from the slightest provocation. His grades, never spectacular, had slipped, as he found himself spending more and more time focusing on not losing his mind. His body was falling apart on a fundamental level, the energy that filled him keeping him from proper rest. He had admitted, painfully, to Giles that he had to spend many nights just running himself into the ground simply so that he could sleep. He was painfully thin, most of his fat burned away to reveal whip-thin cords of muscle wound tighter than steel wires on a suspension bridge.

The worst bit though was his home situation… or rather the lack of one. Amongst one of the admissions he had made to Giles when confronted, he had explained that he after a week of living with his parents he had simply left and now wandered the streets of Sunnydale, an incredibly dangerous activity that Xander acknowledged as being stupid… but if he hadn't left he would have lost it. As he had joked, at least when he had to work out his frustrations it was on creatures that deserved it and no one cared about.

A dark part of Giles felt that since Xander's parents had not raised any fuss after he had left perhaps they fit those criteria all too well. He had since managed to get Xander into a safer location, but it was still something that Xander was clearly uncomfortable talking about.

Then, on the furthest end of the spectrum, there was poor, poor Cordelia. She had not worn one of the costumes Ethan Rayne, curse his name, had enchanted, but that just meant that she had to carry the scars of that night without anything in compensation. The only glimmer of light to come out of that situation was the fact that the young woman had discovered who her real friends were. Xander, Buffy, and Willow had all rallied behind Cordelia and were aiding her in whatever ways they could. Of particular note was the way she and Buffy had managed to bring lace and veils in style. Of course, when someone had implied that such things were demeaning to women, what had occurred had Xander quipping, "Scary ladies deserve scary lace."

Perhaps that was the brightest element that could be recovered from this whole tragic affair: the way Buffy and all of her friends had stuck together despite what had happened to them. Willow never would have found her strength, Buffy would have let her new ruthlessness completely take over, Xander quite probably would have gone insane, and Cordelia would probably be suicidal.

Giles just hoped that with all of the problems with someone trying to reassemble the Judge, they would weather this storm as they had the all the previous ones.

* * *

The group, minus Buffy and Angel who had gone to dispose of the arm of the Judge, was relaxing, as much as possible for them, in the abandoned warehouse they preferred to use for training purposes. Once mostly the domain of Buffy and Giles, it had come to be the gathering place when they were not researching in the library as it allowed them to be a touch freer with weapons than at school.

"So this is what you do at night," Oz noted in deadpan at the collection of gymnastics equipment and weapons racks scattered about.

"Yeah. I would call it our own little Batcave, but we and bats don't exactly get along," Xander replied as he took up position on his favourite meditation pillow. Xander now knew multiple forms of meditation and was quite good at it, but unfortunately having the berserker rage of a demigod stuck in him made achieving enlightenment a somewhat difficult task.

Cordelia drifted wraith-like behind him, her figure obscured by laces and veils, but as everyone who ever mentioned the word 'burkha' around her learned, she was submissive to _no one_. It was just that the plastic surgery she needed took a long time, even with her father's money, and so it still hurt to talk without proper lips and she still disliked being seen, especially by strangers. But she would be _damned _before she hid in her house or some clinic somewhere. She was stronger than that.

And she would be doubly damned if she were to do anything as gross as walk around with visible bandages. So Buffy, who after having a hundred plus year old lady stuck in her head developed a sudden affinity for lace and petticoats and skirts capable of concealing heavy machine guns, had made it her mission to bring back the fashions of an older era in Southern California so that Cordy wouldn't look out of place.

It had been really quite touching, almost as much as the way Xander tried to care for her in his own stupid, berserker sort of way. When everyone else had been abandoning her, he and the others had stuck by her side, and she felt she definitely owed them. So the fact that she helped calm down the chronically ill Xander meant that she stuck to him like glue whenever possible.

Of course, when Cordy asked Xander to take off his shirt that raised an eyebrow from Oz, who asked dryly, "So you… an empty warehouse… three girls… every night?"

Smiling thinly, Xander took off his shirt to reveal an intricate pattern of symbols all over his torso, while Cordelia opened up a small kit with paint brushes and the like. She also flipped up her veil to reveal her skull-like face, the scarred tissue still mostly stretched over nearly bare bone except for a few places where the reconstructive surgery was adding shape back. They still hadn't managed to give her back proper eyelids, which made the veil extra important as it helped keep dust out of her eyes and a heavier one was necessary for sleeping. Right now though, she wanted to be able to see what she was doing clearly.

"Hmm… while a nice thought, I haven't managed to talk any of them into that sort of thing yet," Xander replied, earning him a swat from Cordelia as she mixed her paints.

"So what's with the tribal man stuff?" Oz asked.

"Suppressive seals. They're really neat. I figured them out first, but Cordelia really took up their study when we realized they could be used to help Xander with his… problem," Willow explained happily before trailing off at the end, looking nervously at Xander.

Waving it off, Xander said, "Willow, we've trusted him this much, he deserves to know about the Hulk-thing."

"Hulk-thing?" Oz asked.

"You remember Halloween?" Xander asked in turn. Upon Oz raising a single eyebrow as if to say 'What do you think?' Xander waved it off and said, "Okay, dumb question, most of the West Coast remembers Halloween. Anyway, there was the whole turning into monsters and aliens and fanatics-"

"Oh my," Oz noted.

Smiling at that, Xander continued, "And anyway, the guy I turned into was considerably stronger than most. Unfortunately, he was also kind of cursed and the curse carried on to me even after I got my body back. I say kind of in that it wasn't exactly him who was curse, but I got the same results in the end. The pros: enhanced strength and stamina. The cons: said strength and stamina are linked to a psychotic rage that if ever triggered fully will become permanent and ultimately fatal. Oh, and have I mentioned that I now have nearly overwhelming cravings for raw red meat and blood?"

Oz winced and he said, "Wow. That sucks man."

"I know. Willow gets all of the cool superpowers and all I get is 'Xander smash!'" Xander complained sarcastically.

Having gone off to a corner, Willow said, "Hey! I did not get all of the cool super powers."

"Then what are you doing over there?" Xander asked as Cordelia began to repair the seals on his body that had worn out since the previous day.

There was a sheepish pause before Willow admitted, "I'm trying to use sympathetic magic, a hilt, a large quantity of mercury and a piece of the costume I wore on Halloween to recreate a phase sword."

"A phase sword," Xander deadpanned.

"What's a phase sword?" Oz asked.

"It's a sword that can cut through _anything_," Xander replied.

"Come on, it would be really useful against heavily armoured opponents like this Judge guy," Willow pointed out.

"I thought he couldn't be harmed?" Xander asked.

"Not by forged weapons. This is a magical construct of a weapon made by processes that are so alien that forging can't possibly enter into it," Willow responded.

"You know those sorts of statements never really made sense to me. I mean, sure you know what _won't _kill you, but there are all sorts of other stuff out there. By the way it's worded, a _pointy stick _could kill the Judge," Oz pointed out.

This caused considerably amusement as everyone within earshot imagined a nigh invulnerable demon with a pointy stick jammed in an eye keeling over dead. Of course, the fact that the primary weapon of a Slayer _was _a pointy stick added new connotations to any possible conflict.

Xander added in a moment later, "Yeah, now that I think about it, all sorts of things aren't forged that would really hurt to get hit with: rocks, baseball bats, a block of C4 with a detonator counting down to zero, bullets, uh… even good old fashioned fisticuffs should all fall under the heading of 'not forged'."

"Fisticuffs?" Oz asked in an equally amused and bemused tone.

"It's a real word! I have culture you know," Xander protested, eliciting a snort of derision from Cordelia. Xander retorted, "I have culture _beyond _the stuff growing between my toes!"

"Hey man, I wasn't saying it was _bad_, just kind of funny," Oz replied.

"Well, let's just say that all of our vocabularies are larger than they used to be," Xander said.

"Gothic," Oz said knowingly.

Everyone capable of blinking looked at him and Oz said, "So it would seem that you all now know that I did in fact get a costume from Ethan's this Halloween."

"What did you turn into?" Willow asked as she came up behind Oz, curious.

"If I said my music and interpretive dance improved afterwards…" Oz answered.

"Ooh. Sorry about smashing you into the pavement," Xander replied sheepishly.

Shrugging it off, Oz said, "No worries man. The Harlequin actually knew that was going to happen, and in fact wanted it to happen."

Willow however had perked up and she asked excitedly, "Did you practice any of that stuff? Because it would be neat to add an Eldar martial art to the ones we already have. I bet the two of us could also pull off some wicked dance moves."

Oz raised an eyebrow, and in answer Willow said, "I was the assassin."

"So you're a ninja now?" Oz asked.

"Kind of…" Willow replied cheerily.

Cordelia rolled her eyes and groaned in annoyance while switching paint colours for her work on Xander.

"Oh let them have their fun," Xander chided.

The moment however was ruined by Buffy practically kicking the door to the warehouse off its hinges, her entrance backlit by a bolt of lightning. Walking in from the storm, soaking wet and clearly upset, she said, "We need big guns."

"Buffy! What happened?" Willowed asked, concerned for her friend.

Visibly shaking with outrage, Buffy said, "Right now I have three things I need to kill. The first is the Judge, now completed by Spike and Drusilla. The second is whatever idiot thought that putting conditions on Angel's curse and neglecting to tell him was a good idea. The third is _Angelus_, that vampiric bastard!"


	36. Ignorance

**Chapter Thirty-five: Ignorance**

When a soul claimed by the new Chaos gods is released from its mortal coil, the first thing it does is get taken to the Halls of Sorting, where facets of the gods less independent than daemons worked out the individual merits of each soul. It was also a great place to stick all of the bureaucrats when _they _died. Those directly dedicated to a single god were of course the easiest to sort out, but those with no strong associations in life it took a little work to find out what god they would join with. A large number were divvied up randomly according to which deity was in greater need of a boost.

Once assigned to the appropriate god, most souls were simply consumed, made into a part of the larger whole. Loss of individuality was complete, and only by a special act by the gods could the unique essence of a person be returned. A few souls upon death were passed along by the gods to their servants, the daemons, to add to their power. And an astronomically small number were ascending to daemonhood after death and allowed to keep their identities intact.

Then there were those who did not make it past the screening process. These were the guys who somehow ticked off the gods. By far the vast majority, this resulted in getting stuck in a sword and auctioned off to the highest bidder for a three thousand year long work-release program for the purposes of attitude adjustment. These were primarily abusive assholes and serial criminals, the sorts who pushed the limits of tolerance to the point where a response was required to serve as an example to others so that society wouldn't collapse into the sort of anarchy that would cut off the god's food supply.

And finally there were the tiny, select few who really pissed the gods the _fuck _off. These included serial child rapists, genocidal maniacs, and anyone who somehow earned the ire of all of the gods simultaneously. Also, anyone who was terrified of death and tried to go out in a blaze of destruction for the purposes of getting stuck in an inanimate object rather than being consumed also fell in this category. It was this category that no one wanted to end up in, for that resulted in a one way ticket to the Hall of Torment, the one place where the gods would freely indulge in their most sadistic desires.

The Hall of Torment, while quite deep in the Palace, was open to mortals to let them know the price for breaking the big laws, although viewing wasn't recommended on a full stomach, but forbidden to any daemon under the level of a Prince or Princess or a direct offspring of the gods. The reasons for this were quite simple: the atmosphere was bad for daemons. That much suffering condensed into one area required a very strong will to avoid consuming it and being driven insane by all of the highly negative emotion. Higher level daemons considered it seasoning to a well balanced emotional diet.

Lars on the other hand was a minor daemon. He had only about a hundred different voices to deal with that sort of thing. Just getting stuck in a mortal place of extreme suffering, like say a long used and still active torture chamber, would be like the daemonic equivalent of doing a line of high quality, uncut Columbian cocaine. It would super charge him, but it would also send his aggression through the roof, lower his inhibitions, and cause all sorts of unpleasant side-effects.

Right now, Lars was in Hell, literally and figuratively. If he had known that this was what was in store for him, he would have stood his ground and risked annihilation rather than face coming to this place. He could not count the number of souls down here, or how long they had been here, but none of them were very happy. For Lars, well isolated from the main concentrations of souls and kept in rather neutral conditions, it was essentially the worst experience he had ever had.

It was like someone had injected him with a concentrated solution of cocaine, meth, and LSD, while also force feeding him processed sugar and caffeine slurry. Every moment he could feel himself being inundated with the psychic chatter of all the souls in Hell, filling him with their pain and fear and anger and sadness and… it was just too much. He could feel the primordial animal rising up within him, the alien psychopath that dwelt at the heart of even the most urbane daemon. The voices within him were being drowned out by the instinctive need to lash out.

_ENDURE! RAPE! KILL! ESCAPE!_ That was the mantra running through his mind. Find someone, _anyone_, and utterly destroy them before finding someone else and repeating the process until he was away from this nightmare. He was starting to hallucinate, lurid fantasies of destruction and desecration.

He was trying not to absorb all of this emotional content, but it was like trying to hold his breath. He absorbed emotional content the same way he absorbed Warp energy, so trying to shut himself off caused him to simply weaken up until the point where he lost conscious control and automatically started sucking up the psychic smog of this place. He had resorted to basically trying to 'breath' less; only taking short gulps of energy when necessary.

Not only was he trying to slow his rate of ingestion, but he was trying to slow his rate of digestion by forcing all of the negative emotions he was taking in into a little ball of malice. The only problem with that was that if he kept suppressing all of that psychic energy it would eventually hit critical mass and gain sentience, at which he would give birth to an unrepentantly evil daemon that would probably rapidly begin feeding on the ambient emotions before attempting to get amongst the souls. So Lars was forced to absorb small amounts of that bile to slow down the rate of growth.

It was a delicate balancing act. On the one side, emotions _were_ energy for him, so even though the atmosphere of this place was poisoning him, it was also making him stronger, more capable of tolerating the damage. The more he took in, the less of effect things had, and if he could reorganize the emotional content it wouldn't hurt him. The problem was that his rate of growth was less than the rate of intake, hence why he was accumulating so much undigested psychic material. If he could process the toxins fast enough, he would be able to acclimatize…

If he failed either he would go insane and attempt to become a Hell god, or he would birth an insane daemon, probably _a la Alien_, that would attempt to become a Hell god. Neither of those options particular appealed to him. He gave himself another day before he either pulled through or exploded.

This was one of those things that if Lars had _known _were going to happen, he wouldn't have allowed himself to be captured.

* * *

The situation with Yggdrasil had gone from 'bad' to 'teetering on the edge of insanity' in the few days since Lars had gone missing. The bugs had been multiplying at a rate never before seen, not even when Lars had first arrived. Shifts of gods were assigned to just smashing bugs and they had graduated to heavy artillery in the form of magical flamethrowers capable of taking out large numbers of bugs at once. The downside, aside from rapidly depleting the energy of the user, was that such objects also tended to do significant amounts of damage to Yggdrasil if not aimed properly. Unfortunately, at the rate the bugs were forming, it was worth the risk.

"Okay… so a nutty chaos monster appears to have been captured by the demons and dragged off to Hell. Can we list all of the ways that this is bad?" Skuld muttered to herself as she worked on the World Computer as quickly as she could, trying to figure out something to do to stem the tide of bugs on a fundamental level rather than just fighting back the tide.

Urd, having borrowed Skuld's mallet for her shift of bug smashing, answered, "Well, he's a self admitted psychophage, so exposure to damned souls probably isn't good for him."

Skuld blinked and then cried out, "Of course!"

"Of course what?" Urd asked while splattering more bug guts everyone. On the other side of the control room a flamethrower flared, incinerating a forming ring of bugs.

"While technically under the purview of Yggdrasil, the demonic realms are all encrypted so we can't do advanced searches down there. Aside from that, Lars doesn't have any coding that we can track anyway. _However_, we _can_ plot emotional densities anywhere in the multiverse, it's just not something that would normally be useful," Skuld explained, her fingers flying over the keyboard to write the necessary program to do what she needed.

"But since Lars is a psychophage we might be able to find him by looking for any anomalous points," Urd finished. "I'm going to have to admit, that's pretty brilliant."

"And… running search now," Skuld said just as she hit the 'Execute' command for her program. For a few moments holographic displays skimmed over various readings until several different screens displayed locations with unusual emotional densities. Some, like the abnormal stress levels in the usually serene Yggdrasil Control Room, were quickly discarded.

The black hole in the middle of Hell on the other hand kind of scared the pants off everyone wearing pants. For anyone wearing a skirt, it made them want to put on pants for the sake of safety and so that they could have said pants scared off.

"What do you think; does that swirling vortex of doom look like it might be who we're looking for?" Urd asked, her eyes wide at the display. Huge masses of pain, rage, loss, and despair were all swirling down into a single point where it was being compressed into a ball of raw malice waiting to explode in an orgy of violence.

"Probably," Skuld replied. "I'm going to run a search for unknown readings and cross-reference with this report."

Splashing bits of bug across the absolutely filthy chamber, Urd wondered aloud, "Do you think _that _has anything to do with the upswing in bug production rates?"

"I would bet a fifty gallon tub of ice cream they are," Skuld answered. "There's a _lot _of energy in that vortex, and if his presence in the multiverse causes the production of bugs, it seems safe to say that as that energy goes into him, he would have a more disruptive effect."

Another screen popped up, and all of the gods paused to look at what was there. Finally Urd noted, "Well _there's _the problem!"

Had any of them known who, or rather what, was listening in, they probably would have been more careful with their words.

* * *

Think watch Hunters. Think avoid Hunters. Think listen Hunters. Think _learn _Hunters.

Hunters hunt Not-Like-Think. Hunters kill Not-Like-Think. But Hunters not kill Think. Think smart. Think hide. But Think not want Hunters kill Not-Like-Think. Think want more Not-Like-Think. Think want Like-Think.

Think watch Hunters. Hunters hunt Big-Think. Think hear Big-Think sometimes. Big-Think not know Think. Think still hear Big-Think. Big-Think and Think linked. Not-Like-Think not liked to Big-Think. Like-Think linked to Big-Think? Think not know. Think want know. Hunters kill Big-Think, Think never know. Hunters kill Big-Think, Think be like Not-Like-Think? Think not want know.

Hunters find Big-Think. Hunters find source of Not-Like-Think. Hunters want leave Think alone. Hunters want kill Think. Think not like that.

But if Think get Big-Think to source of Not-Like-Think? Maybe Big-Think makes Not-Like-Think into Like-Think? Think like that.

Not-Like-Think try to make circle, make more Not-Like-Think. Never work, too many Hunters. Maybe if two circles at once… probably if three circles… definitely with four. Think just need get Not-Like-Think to all make circles.

Hmmm…

* * *

One moment the gods and goddesses were all staring at the gaping hole in reality at the edge of the multiverse where they really ever looked that was tied by a thin string of energy to the 'swirling vortex of doom' in Hell, the next every bug in the room suddenly got the bright idea to sudden form a summoning gate or five.

To say that things exploded into mayhem would be akin to saying that getting caught under a thermonuclear explosion at point blank range was 'hot'. It was technically accurate, but failing to grasp the full context of the situation.

Bugs and gods were flying everywhere, weapons scything down massive numbers of bugs, but they just kept coming. In all of the confusion, only one deity noticed an oddly coloured bug sit down at a now unoccupied terminal for Yggdrasil and begin writing a program.

Snatching her debugging mallet out of her sister's hands, Skuld rushed over to smash the oddly behaving pest before it could do too much harm.

Just as she arrived the bug completed its task and leapt away, landing on one of the fully formed rings in time for the program to execute. What happened made everything that had preceded it look tame in comparison.

* * *

Lars was sitting down in his isolation cell, hallucinating chopping Hild into tiny pieces, using the remains to grow magic mushrooms, and then getting _amazingly _high when he noticed the fact that a hole in reality seemed to open up in front of him.

Lars blinked once before self-preservation kicked in and managed to return him to something approaching lucidity, at which point he really only had time to mutter, "Well _fuck_…" before the sudden rush of air falling into the tear sucked him in.

Upon hitting the other side of the unexpected portal, Lars' physical form disintegrated and he became more of an _idea_. For those who knew such things, this was his true form, a collection of emotions and thoughts bound together by one another. For those capable of seeing such things, he resembled a sort of bat shaped cloud of dark blue and green light, with a tight ball of luminescent whiteness at the centre and twin 'eyes' of blackness at the 'head'.

Taking 'flight' on currents of cosmic energy, Lars observed his surroundings. He was in an infinitely large neutral space of blank white, except for an enormous hole that led into the sort of inky blackness that Lars was used to when in the Immaterium. From that hole an enormous amount of energy was being spewed, creating great black tendrils of mixing reality.

Banking into the cosmic winds, Lars discovered that there was another hole in the limbo than the one he had fallen through that led back to Hell and the gaping rent in the structure of the universe. Out of this hole dozens of eight legged rabbits fell, streaming in towards the hole in reality, where they promptly began to explode when brought in contact with the darkness emitted from the exit from this section of the multiverse.

Following the tumble of the rabbit-things were several gods and goddesses, surprised by the sudden breach of space-time next to them. Several of them quickly flared wings or had angelic figures pop out of their backs and pull up, assuming a wide circling pattern around the hole, but one figure in particular took quite the long tumble before manifesting an angel, assuming a _very _close orbit about the hole.

Swooping in, Lars discovered three things. The first was that the pressure from the cosmic winds were quite strong, trying to push him away from the tear. The second was that the figure that had fallen so far was Skuld. The third was that Skuld's angel was struggling to hold them _away _from the tear, the complete opposite of the force Lars felt.

"Lars?" Skuld cried out in confusion and terror as she circled closer to the blackness.

_Yes._

"Lars! Help me!" Skuld begged while tears of panic streamed down her face. "If I touch that stuff…" Her point was made when another one of those rabbit-things impacted a tendril of alternate reality and promptly triggered a mutual annihilation process.

_Of course_.

Swooping in, Lars sent out tendrils of thought to wrap around Skuld and then he flared his wings, trying to ride the storm up and out, but even with both of them pulling up and Lars being affected oppositely by the storm, all he managed to do was slow down Skuld's downward spiral.

_The force pulling you in is too strong._

"Oh God! Oh God! Help me daddy! Oh God!" Skuld wailed, terrified and child-like.

Lars looked at the storm and then up at the gods in higher orbits, clearly able to get out at that range as they were not beyond the event horizon yet of their capacity to escape the pull, while Skuld was far past that point. He considered the detritus still falling. Lars considered the situation for a moment before he made his decision.

_Can you hold on by yourself for a few seconds? I'm about to do something incredibly stupid._

Skuld screamed in panic as Lars let go, but her angel did not cease trying to pull them out of the maelstrom. Banking sharply, Lars flew up and snatched up an odd looking rabbit-thing an enveloped it in his essence. The thing went surprisingly calm as soon as he had it, which made what he did next significantly easier.

Lars stooped and dove into the storm, carrying the rabbit-thing with him as he smashed into the clouds of other-real essence. As he suspected, it was the equivalent to Warp-stuff so it was utterly harmless to him. As he hoped, by keeping the rabbit-thing out of direct contact with the stuff, it did not explode inside him, and was in fact utterly unharmed by the experience. Lars considered dropping the rabbit-thing but decided against it as while the force pulling it in was quite significant, the closer he got to the centre, the hard it was to dive, so he figured extra ballast might be a good idea, plus it would help him for part of his idea.

Flaring his wings again, Lars let himself be pushed out of the storm and back up to where Skuld was, and he noted that she had dropped perilously close to the edge of the clouds. It seemed that because she and her angel were not fully mature they were rapidly losing strength fighting the pull of the storm.

Settling in next to Skuld, Lars stabilized her like he did before, although this time it was significantly harder since she was lower.

_Skuld, can you hear me?_

"Y-y-yes…" Skuld answered, terrified of the looming black clouds that were at most a dozen metres away and getting closer with every second.

_I'm going to wrap you up so that I completely surround you, and thus protect you from the black essence. We will then dive into the storm. If everything goes well, I will drop one of those rabbit-things at the bottom of the dive and we can slingshot back out. If that works, we might have to make several passes, but I'll be able to get you out. If it _doesn't _work, then we can plunge through the hole and I'll find a stable universe where you'll be safe and we can work on getting you home. Are you fine with that?_

Skuld nodded fearfully.

Lars wrapped himself about Skuld and then dived towards the heart of the storm once more. This time however, he could immediately tell that he had made a mistake. He hadn't realized that all of the material he needed to cocoon Skuld would adversely affect his ability to produce lift as much as it did. Lars could feel the pressure trying to essentially blow him off Skuld and the rabbit-thing as they approached the very heart of storm, and he had to divert more of himself to just keeping her safe. There was no way he was going to be able to pull out of this dive and keep his cargo safe.

_Sorry Skuld, we're going to have to do this the hard way._

Skuld had been screaming through the entire descent but now she was really panicking as they picked up speed and got closer and closer to the point where one form of reality began to intrude into another.

Upon impact with that interface, Lars was given a brief moment of insight as he realized that he was what had been holding the breach open. Unfortunately, now that he had enough energy, in the form of the kinetic energy built up by holding onto Skuld as they fell, he had essentially reversed the pressure on the system as he left.

This meant that instead of exiting the breach fast but at a controllable speed, Lars instead discovered that he was now a ballistic missile instead of a diving hawk. It was all he could do to hang onto Skuld as they shot across the void between universes like an arrow loosed from a bow. Skuld was of course panicking as she couldn't see anything of what was going on, but considering that she couldn't see the higher dimensional structure they were about to smack into at ludicrous speed, that was probably a blessing.

They impacted the outer shell of the universe at a velocity slightly less than what Lars had struck Skuld's home at, so he mostly retained consciousness even as he started to tumble like a bullet through flesh, ricocheting off internal cosmic structures until finally they had shed enough energy that they got stuck in one place and stayed there.

Manifesting his human form when through into a fully material world, Lars ended up dumping Skuld and the forgotten rabbit-thing back out as his form coalesced into his preferred human shape, and the three of them came to a painful, bouncing stop.

Recovering first, Lars quickly checked out their surroundings for any sort of threat, but all he could really detect was that they were in some sort of lightless, underground cavern that was quite large, so hopefully they would be able to find their way to the surface. Lars still had a headache from their entry, so he couldn't get a clear psychic reading, but it seemed that they were alone.

Feeling fairly confident that they were out of immediate peril, Lars did a quick check on Skuld and was immediately dismayed by what he found. Physically she was alright, but he could tell just from looking at her that psychically and spiritually she was in bad shape, probably due to the fact that she was cut off from her home universe. If he had to guess, he would say that she was probably little better off right now than an annoyingly precocious and genius fourteen year old mortal girl.

This meant that when the darts smacked into him and Skuld, he was more than a little worried. Skuld had just enough time to wake up from the pain of having a dart in her gut before she fainted again, obviously some sort of drug coating the barbs.

Lars on the other hand was not so affected and he immediately whirled in the direction the darts had come from, all of his senses flaring out to look for targets. Whoever had done that had picked the _wrong_ daemon to shoot at.


	37. Darkness

**Chapter Thirty-six: Darkness**

Darts pattering into him uselessly, Lars stalked forward towards the attackers, the darkness acting as no barrier to senses adapted to the infinite lightless void of the Warp. He might not have been able to see _directly_, but he could tell where everything was. When it became apparent to the attackers that their poisons and darts were not working on him, they decided to switch tactics and Lars felt some form of magic wash over him. Unfortunately for whoever had cast it, the spell was keyed towards living creatures of this reality, and _not _a daemon like Lars.

He could feel their minds and how they were little better than mortal humans. How _dare _they fire upon a goddess and a daemon? Just for the insult Lars would kill them. For the injury to Skuld, he would ensure that it wasn't pleasant. He could feel the haughty pride in all of them, how their confusion at his ability to shrug off their attacks was outweighed by their own smug sense of superiority.

He would enjoy _breaking _them of that belief.

The attackers were clustered on a ledge formed by what was probably a tunnel exiting into this cavern. There were four beings arranged in a firing line, with two behind them, each with lines of magical energy leading into them. It however was nothing like how Lars or any other daemon or psychic would perform sorcery. It was too… tentative, in comparison to the 'Seize the Warp by the throat before it causes your head to explode' style of Warp sorcery he was used to.

Before these creatures knew what was happening Lars had leapt up to where they had formed their battle lines, causing the front four to jump back a step in surprise, dropping their little hand crossbows to draw their melee weapons. For two of them, it was not enough. Grabbing the centre two warriors by their heads, Lars hoisted them up and hurled them over the edge, causing them to go screaming face first into the hard stone below, their cries abruptly silenced by wet crunches.

Then one of the two rear line creatures finished its spell and hurled a bolt of lightning straight into Lars' chest. The blast caused some amount of heating damage, but since Lars didn't have a nervous system or for that matter proper _matter _making him up, the vast majority of the damage was superficial.

Lars' retaliation was… _disproportionate._ A single lance of psychic power straight into the sorcerer's mind was all he did, but there were a few things that made this a little off scale. The first was that Lars' abilities were oriented around psychically shouting across distances so vast the concept of distance as a concept meaningful to three dimensional creatures broke down. The second was that the last time he had calibrated his psychic attacks it had been against demons who had managed to fight deities capable of direct reality editing to a standstill. The third was that he still had a huge amount of energy stored up from his stay in Hell and that was both supercharging him and making him not give a damn. The fourth was that he'd had a really lousy past two weeks and he really didn't feel like going easy on someone who had just shot him with a lightning bolt.

The impact tore through the relatively fragile defences of the mind with a degree of violence similar to a berserk Evangelion going to town on a beached whale. The creature's psyche simply tore like wet tissue paper, the remains of its soul vacating its body with an agonized psychic scream. The shock was so great that the other creatures around it suffered, their brains temporarily thinking that they had died and causing total muscle relaxation for a moment. While it didn't quite cause them to keel over, it did disrupt the other sorcerer, and more embarrassingly, it caused them all to soil themselves.

Recovering before the warriors, the sorcerer said in a feminine voice, "Kill it!" before she began to chant again, casting a new spell. Shaking off their shock, the warriors finished readying their weapons only to discover Lars was quite capable of blocking their blades with his bare hands and that getting bitch slapped by him knocked out teeth. Knocking a shield aside, he thrust the heel of his palm into his target's chest so hard it was killed by shards of sternum perforating its heart.

Then the female sorcerer completed her spell and Lars suddenly found himself feeling rather a great deal of pain as the universe tried to violently reject him only to discover that it had nowhere to really put him, so it settled for just warping the fabric of space-time around and within him.

Staggering back, Lars had his guard opened up so that the final remaining warrior managed to bury its sword in his neck. This stung a great deal, but considering that it trapped the blade there and it couldn't actually kill Lars, it was actually a net loss for the being that had once wielded the sword.

The sorcerer tried something else now, releasing a burst of oddly formed energy that felt a great deal like certain flavours of the Warp tinted with an aspect of psychic command, but Lars batted that aside effortlessly with his mind. Reaching up, he snapped the blade embedded in his neck in two before breaking the arm of the warrior trying to finish him off with a dagger.

He could _taste _the remaining two creatures' fear and confusion, and he revelled in it. This was what it meant to be a daemon. Bloodshed and insanity! Destroying the minds and bodies of his enemies and then feasting upon their flesh and souls after. As the warrior reeled back, in pain, Lars plunged his hand into its chest and the chain mail that offered absolutely no protection against his warp sharp claws. Gleefully, he ripped out its heart, cackling with delight at the dying screams of his victim.

The last remaining member of the party cast one last spell before Lars could turn his full attention on her. Space and time buckled and a hole opened in reality, allowing the sorcerer to leap through, but unfortunately for her Lars found the twisted path easy enough to follow, much to her surprise.

She had not gone far, but she had picked her target well. She stepped through her little hole in reality right next to where Skuld was sleeping under the influence of the dart in her gut, and with lighting quick reflexes managed to get a dagger next to her throat, just in time to enter into a Mexican stand-off with Lars, who had his hands around _her _throat.

"Take the knife away from her, _now_," Lars demanded, using his ability to pluck languages out of thin air to good use.

Her arrogant pride quickly returning, the sorceress said, "The fact that you have not taken my head off yet indicates that you are somehow bound to this top-worlder, as I thought you might be. Are you compelled to protect her?"

Suppressing his rage, and suddenly feeling rather disgusted with himself for losing control so spectacularly, Lars thought about it for a moment before he replied, "I _am _compelled to protect her." Technically true as his compulsion was that he didn't want to see the brat get killed, but he left the words ambiguous enough to perhaps let this creature think that he was defending her beyond his own will.

"Then take your claws off my throat," the sorceress ordered.

"Take your blade off her throat first," Lars counter demanded.

"No," the creature replied, pressing in deeper, eliciting a whimper from Skuld in her sleep as a tiny prick of blood was drawn.

"I said _off_, not away. I know who has the upper hand here," Lars demanded.

"No. I saw what you did to my wizard, and while I do not know your breed demon, I am not willing to risk that you might be able to do it again in short order. If I die, goddess only knows where my blade might go as I twitch," she replied.

Muttering obscenities in Finnish, one of several dozen languages he knew from the souls within him, Lars said, "Just remember that she is only as good as a hostage while alive. She dies, _you _die."

"Release me," she ordered, and Lars reluctantly replied. Practically purring with smug self-satisfaction, she then said, "Good. Now back up several paces."

Lars backed up several paces, growling in frustration. The sound was not pretty, and it was not entirely audible as it also had a psychic component, but he could do nothing at the moment _but _growl.

Sitting down, the sorceress set Skuld on her lap so that she would be able to keep her unconscious hostage between her and Lars while keeping her dagger at her throat and leaving one hand free. Reaching into a pouch, the sorceress removed a scroll that was curiously imbibed with energy to Lars' senses and then she spoke a few sharp syllables, followed by a quick message.

"Encountered demon and human. Demon bound to human. Demon wiped out rest of team. Have human hostage, demon at bay. Request back up. Locator activating."

Carefully observing, Lars felt the message head off into the ether. He could have easily intercepted it and destroyed it, but that would have distracted him and potentially tipped the sorceress off. As the message was sent, the sorceress dropped the scroll and turned something around on her chest, activating a small psychic signal and generating a low blue glow.

Finally seeing his quarry for the first time with actual eyes, Lars discovered that the creature that had Skuld hostage was a humanoid with sharply edged features and pointed ears, somewhat like the descriptions of the Eldar, only with ebon black skin and far less of an alien air. She was adorned in chain mail and a black tabard with spider web filigree, while her cloak seemed to drink what little light there was, helping her to blend into the background. Her white hair was tied back tightly and kept out of her face by a tiara with a single black diamond at the centre. Strapped at her side was an unpleasant looking mace with a definite spider motif going for it.

Lars on the other hand looked like a human sailor wearing a yellow rain coat. While he had looked like that all through the fight, except for his fingers, and the dark skinned creature obviously had some way of seeing in the dark, she was definitely taken aback by his incongruous appearance when fully revealed.

"You think you can unnerve me by concealing your true form?" The sorceress asked with contempt.

"Well, considering the fact that I already made you soil yourself, I doubt I can unnerve you more than I already did without driving you permanently insane," Lars replied nonchalantly.

Hissing with enormous rage, she spat, "And for that you will _pay _demon."

"Oh, I doubt you can make me pay more than the rest of the multiverse already has," Lars noted dryly.

"Do you chafe under the dominion of this one?" She asked, obviously sensing an opportunity.

"She's not exactly the sort I get along readily with, but I don't particularly have a choice as my superiors would be _displeased _should I let anything happen to her," Lars stated, which was something of an exaggeration as he would probably be able to get away with his neck intact and unsealed in a sword, but the gods wouldn't be exactly _happy _with him letting a young girl like Skuld get killed.

Okay, so as a deity she was probably a couple of centuries old, but she still _acted _like an adolescent, which was the important thing in his gods' eyes.

Incorrect enlightenment passed across the sorceress' face and she said, "Ah… so the little surface dweller is important to your masters?"

"In a way. I do not attempt to comprehend their plans or plots; I simply do as they tell me. Should you kill that girl, I will have failed their commandments," Lars explained. Once again, everything he said was not an actual _lie_, it was just that his statements were not related to one another in the way he let on.

"So no actual magic binds you to this one?" The black skinned woman asked, tilting the knife slightly.

"Stronger things than mere magic compel me to do what I do," Lars answered, leaving unsaid the fact that said 'things' were compassion, duty, and honour.

"So it would seem. You must protect this one, no? So if I ordered you to do something upon threat to her life?" The sorceress asked.

Lars glared at her and replied, "It would be noted that the _threat _is more important than the _action_. Push me too far, or into something that might make me disobey the commandments of my lords, and you will see what such actions bring you."

"But you…" She began.

"Some orders are stronger than others. Attempt to divine them at your own risk," Lars replied with a growl.

"Duly noted," the sorceress replied. "However, a demon of your calibre would make a formidable ally to my house."

"So I would. Just remember that you will have to keep the blade at her throat at all times or I will take my revenge," Lars replied.

"We will see. If no magic binds you yet, then that simplifies binding you to us," the sorceress sneered.

"What makes you think you will succeed?" Lars countered. While he had little doubt that these creatures knew how to bind _demons_, if they thought their methods would work the same on _daemons_, they were sorely mistaken.

The sound of others arriving at the ledge where the battle had taken place ended the conversation, the dark skinned woman finishing by saying, "We will see."


	38. Capture

**Chapter Thirty-seven: Capture**

Now surrounded on all sides by the black skinned creatures, Lars could do nothing as they isolated him from Skuld and kept her under close guard while two new sorcerers kept him and another female sorceress interviewed the one who had survived, obviously disgusted by both the fact that Lars had caused so much trouble and by the fact that the survivor had soiled herself.

Lars for his part was trying to hide how much that one spell had _hurt_. He had the feeling it had not interacted properly with his otherworldly nature and so he was still trying to pull his stretched being back into alignment. He just hoped that these creatures did not figure out that that particular attack was effective on him.

Finally the sorceress who had been grilling her subordinate approached Lars, flicking her wrist so that a tiny spell was launched at Lars. Clinging to him, it lit him up in pale, ethereal fire that provided only light. Obviously she wanted a better look at him. Of course, this also gave Lars a good look at her. She appeared much like the other sorceress, if a bit more ornately decorated and her features perhaps a touch older.

"He looks like little more than a filthy top-worlder," the new leader noted scornfully.

Licking an eyeball with a thin tentacle extruded from his mouth, Lars noted dryly, "Looks can be deceiving."

One of the lesser sorcerers standing guard over Lars noted warily, "I do not like this one highest. My scrying has not let me know of what manner of demon he is, if he be demon at all."

Growling in annoyance, the sorceress said to her minion, "I do not _care_. Can we control it?"

The two sorcerers deliberated for a few moments before they declared, "Probably. But it will take time and careful deliberation highest. We cannot bind it in the wild."

The sorceress seemed ready to give a command when salt water began to drip profusely from under Lars' coat and rime ice began to form on the cave walls. Lars then grinned over broadly and with far more teeth than he had shown a moment before and hissed telepathically _If the next words out of your mouth are anything but 'we take them both with us' you will regret them._

Everyone in attendance boggled at this sudden change and while the leader refused to show her fear, she did say, "You think petty trickery will change my mind?"

Glancing at him and then at his leader, one of the sorcerers whispered, "Highest, it _hasn't cast a spell yet_. That's a wild magic_ backlash_."

The sorceress blinked and then a grin crept over her face. "I _see._ So you will do what we say so long as we keep your little pet alive?"

"And in good condition. But yes, I must protect her, and I will take whatever steps necessary to do so. Please remember that your deaths are quite high on my list of necessary steps," Lars commented.

"Quite. Well then, your little pet here dies unless you eliminate this soiled piece of offal for failing me," the leader said with a sneer while jerking her thumb at the one who had originally held Skuld hostage.

Lars was on the surprised sorceress before she could register the betrayal, his mouth opening up hugely large while his tongue became a grasping set of tentacles that ensnared the sorceress' head and face, pulling her in. Her screams were only cut short by Lars' tentacles filling her mouth, nose and throat. When it was done, the dead body slumped to the ground, the face drenched with frigid seawater and covered in thousands of tiny bites, none of them fatal. The true fatal blow had been Lars ripping her soul from her body for consumption. He was still feeling aggressive and impulsive from his stint in Hell

Tucking away his tentacles, he shifted his appearance to that of the dead sorceress for a moment. He said in a weird echoing version of both his voice and hers, "**I enjoyed that.**" He then reverted back to his usual form.

Everyone looked shocked at the sheer brutality of it, but the leader recovered first, laughing greedily. She said, "Now I see why you did so much damage! Ha! I should have promoted the bitch. Oh well, now I don't have to share the credit for your discovery. You will call me either Mistress Aruvixa or highest."

"Very well Mistress Aruvixa," Lars growled out.

* * *

They had been marching in silence for hours, the only brief respite being when about half an hour after they left the cave where Lars and Skuld had arrived they had come across a camp where strange, bestial slaves had been waiting. They had quickly broken camp and the carriage of Skuld was turned over to two of the slaves with a pole that they tied her too, with a warrior standing by her at all times, sword drawn and ready to thrust.

Lars tirelessly followed along, an eye on Skuld and Aruvixa at all times, although mostly he delegated this to some of his other minds while he worked on a rather personal problem. Namely the little ball of unpleasant emotions he had sitting inside of him. It had, for lack of a better word, _hardened_. Lars had compressed it too much and delayed attempting consumption so long that the energy had taken on its own ontological inertia.

Right now it was little more than a psychic jaw breaker, and if Lars took a few days to consume it, the problem would be solved, which was what he was slowly doing. The problem was that he still had a lot of unprocessed hatred and anger in his system, especially after the fight, and consuming more would not do wonders for his disposition. Especially after eating that sorceress, although now that he had her apparently the title used for her particular brand of magic was 'cleric' as she had to have her spells prepared for her by her goddess and then begged for them each day with prayer.

With all of the toxic emotion still in his system, Lars found it quite amusing to slice apart her soul in a sadistic form of dissection, peeling her apart like an onion. While she released more poisons into his system, he just turned all of that hatred and avarice against her. She would have got the Hall of Torment back home anyway, so his crude ministrations did not seem out of line. Once the memory of sacrificing a child captured in a raid was discovered, things got _really _unpleasant for the cleric.

"What are you grinning about demon?" One of Lars' guards asked in a whisper.

"Digesting," Lars replied cheerfully, his face twisting into an agonized mask of the dead woman before subsiding again. Inside he immediately felt a twinge of regret, noting just how badly tainted he was at the moment, but he didn't let it show.

The guard went very silent after that.

His attention temporarily distracted, Lars returned it to keeping an eye on Skuld and was immediately alarmed. He had been watching her so continuously up until that point while being otherwise distracted that he had not noticed what was happening to her.

Namely, she was very slowly running out of energy. It was why she had yet to wake up even after the poison had worn off. And if it continued it would become lethal.

Stopping, Lars announced, "Mistress Aruvixa, I have just noticed that my ward is quite ill. If you do not want her to die and for me to slaughter you all and eat your souls, I recommend you allow me to tend to her."

Halting the march, Aruvixa turned to Lars with a lethal look in her eyes and asked, "Do you think your threats frighten me?"

His face straight, Lars replied, "Considering my ward still lives, _yes_. Now, will we have another discussion about our relationship, or will you take a recommendation with your best interests to heart, Mistress Aruvixa?"

Nodding to the guards about Skuld, Aruvixa ordered, "Set the surface dweller down and keep your swords on her throat."

Nodding, Lars said, "Thank you Mistress Aruvixa."

Sitting down next to Skuld, Lars probed with his psychic senses, and confirmed what he had suspected. Cut off from her native universe, Skuld was suffering from magic depletion, and as a goddess, this would be an ultimately fatal state unless she had some way of replenishing her energy.

There was magical energy all around, but Skuld's body seemed unable to tap into it, which was unfortunate as her divine body could certainly handle being plugged into some of the main lines of power that Lars could detect. Probing about, Lars examined the relationship between the magic of this world and the creatures around him. The slaves had a very small connection, but it was there, while even the black skinned warriors had noticeable ones. The cleric's direct link was about the same size as the warriors, but there was a secondary connection of much, much greater magnitude, presumably the link to her goddess. The wizards on the other hand had huge links directly to the lines of power, enough that he could tell that they knew he was examining them.

Skuld had no such link.

Running a psychic finger over a stray strand of free floating magical power, Lars was intrigued by the fact that there was a second set of strands that under laid the other, a subtle darkness to the bright light. That network seemed unconnected to the living creatures, so Lars left it alone, although he would have a look at it later.

Taking the filament of natural magic, Lars grasped it between two sharp psychic 'fingers' and gently snipped it. The two pieces of the filament immediately snapped apart, and it was all Lars could do to contain the backlash. It wouldn't have been very big, but possibly enough to spook the guards into slicing Skuld's throat open.

"Sorry! Sorry! I'm trying to do something delicate here and it got away from me," Lars announced as a slight electric hum built up and hairs began to stand on end, but it died down before anything exploded.

"What are you doing?" Aruvixa demanded.

"My ward has suffered from a mishap and she is currently cut off from her normal supply of magical energy, so I am attempting to splice her into the local magical field," Lars explained as he found another thin filament.

"She's cut off from the Weave and you're trying to tie her back in?" One of the wizards asked incredulously.

"Yes," Lars replied.

"You can do that?" Aruvixa asked.

"I'm going to try. Umm… she might convulse a little, would you mind moving your swords just a bit for a few seconds?" Lars asked the guards.

Aruvixa nodded and said, "I want to see if this works."

Once more Lars cut the line of magic, but this time he immediately grabbed one of the ends firmly. The other went sparking off for a second before tying back in to the rest of the network, creating a small burst of light and noise as it did so. Holding the live wire of magical energy was like sticking his finger in a wall socket, but Lars managed to hold on to it. He then reached out and as gently as he could he lifted up a tiny portion of Skuld's soul so that he could connect the two.

Bringing the tiny but raw vein of magic together with Skuld, Lars managed to tie the two together and get them to stick. At first Skuld's body recoiled and she began to go into convulsions, but very quickly she settled down. The peak output when first connected was quite large, but considering that Skuld could handle several orders of magnitude more energy easily, she survived the initial surge and once it settled down so did she.

"There, I've fixed the problem, we can continue now," Lars replied.

The wizards looked at him incredulously before one of them pointed out, "You just took a raw piece of the Weave and plugged her into it!"

Shrugging, Lars replied, "I did what I needed to do. She needed the energy; your 'Weave' had it."

Calculating this sort of thing, Aruvixa asked, "Could you do this to others?"

"I could, but I wouldn't recommend it, Mistress Aruvixa. I used the smallest strand of magic I could find and it nearly overwhelmed me, and if my ward had not been already used to handling large amounts of magic, the initial shock might have killed her," Lars explained.

"Curious. We will discuss this more later. For now though, we continue. You may prove even more valuable than I had anticipated," Aruvixa noted.

"That I may," Lars replied. He idly wondered what Aruvixa would smell like if he plugged her into the Weave on her orders. He guessed burnt bacon. That _was _the smell of a greedy animal set on fire after all.


	39. Menzoberranzan

**Chapter Thirty-eight: Menzoberranzan**

A few hours later, after they had encountered a strange point of space-time where reality folded in on itself to form a wormhole to another point in this strange underground world, or a portal as the drow like to unimaginatively call it, Skuld began to wake up. Possessing constantly active psychic senses meant that Lars was the first one to notice.

_Skuld, its Lars. Don't say or do anything, okay? We're in a bit of a tight situation here, what with being surrounded by homicidal maniacs currently holding you at sword point, and any screaming or whining on your part would not help._

Skuld's eyes fluttered open and considering that she probably only saw blackness while feeling the ropes binding her and the fact that she was suspended from a pole being carried, her first instinct probably was to scream out in fear.

_Don't scream!_

Skuld somehow managed to keep her mouth shut, although a small whimper did escape her lips.

Her current guard glanced down at her, noticed that she was awake, and paid her no further heed.

_Okay Skuld, here is the unfortunate situation. You are currently being held as hostage to ensure my good behaviour as they are appreciative of my ability to kill people… gods; I'm a freaking glorified _radio,_ not a soldier! Anyway, let them hold you for only that, and not because you're a goddess, for which I have no idea how they will respond. They are a bunch of xenophobic, matriarchal theocrats with access to some really nasty magic. Magic of the sort that can hurt me, and considering you're cut off from home, you're really weak right now. You got all of that?_

Skuld nodded slowly and weakly, obviously terrified out of her wits by the unknown around her.

_Please relax Skuld. I can't exactly say that there is nothing scary in the darkness, but I'm here… actually, in retrospect I probably _am _the scariest thing in the darkness right now, but I'm on your side. Uh… okay, I was trying to be reassuring, but that appears to have not worked. Umm… shit, this is awkward. My culture isn't very good at reassuring people from outside of it. Our reassurances involve promises of vengeance and evisceration and raining unholy fury upon enemies. We're not a very cuddly group._

Skuld just blinked at him in the darkness, more confused than scared now.

_Seriously, it's pretty morbid and perverse. I never really got into it, but even our children are told that if any monsters _dare _hide in the closet or under the bed mommy and daddy are going to disembowel them and put their heads on stakes as a warning to any other monster planning on scaring their little one. Never having had children while mortal, I can't really comment, but I must say that for all the problems my people have, child rearing is actually one of those places where we shine._

…

_Where was I? Oh, right, umm… just, don't get scared and freak out, okay? I'm doing everything in my power to protect you, and if you keep quiet that will make my job much easier, and incidentally extend your lifespan. This brings me to my next point. Uh… how should I put this? In order to save your life I had to do something… rude and unpleasant really… to you. Yeah… bear with me here for a second while I work out a proper analogy._

Skuld let a cross look reach her face, but she stayed quiet, waiting for an answer.

_Okay… okay, I've got an analogy here. Let us say, metaphorically- _metaphorically- _that your heart had stopped beating, and in order to save you, I had to apply CPR. Not that it did, or that _I _did, just you know, as way of analogy. Anyway, in the course of performing CPR, I would have to touch your chest and make lip-to-lip contact during the compressions and the rescue breathing, right? But, I was just saving your life and nothing sexual or the like was meant, and any bruising you might receive would be considered just one of those things, right? And…_

Skuld was glaring at him. She wasn't saying anything and her aim was off in the darkness, but she was definitely glaring at him.

_Look, I'm sorry! I only did what I did because I needed to save your life. You were running out of magic so I made a quick and dirty connection between your soul and the local magic field of this universe to keep you from fading away to nothing._

Skuld blinked.

_Okay, maybe it's a little different where you come from, but touching someone else's soul uninvited is considered extremely rude, and even a crime where I come from depending on the exact circumstances. I mean, outside of combat anyway, but we consider cunt punching a viable combat tactic, so don't even go _there._ But yeah, what I did would be considered like CPR. Still, sorry about that._

Skuld went silent and seemed to be thinking about these things.

_Anyway, just keep quiet for a little while. I think we'll be stopping soon, and you should be able to safely talk then, and we'll discuss this. Okay? Aside from clearing this up, we'll need to work out the implications of this world's magic and its affect on you._

Skuld nodded slightly and remained silent and afraid. About an hour later Aruvixa did call for a stop for the day, and the entire party moved up to a defensible cave that branched off from the main tunnel they were travelling down. Setting up sentries, the drow quickly established their camp.

"My charge is currently awake; may I speak with her to ascertain her health?" Lars asked.

Aruvixa considered for a moment before she waved him off and said, "You may speak with her, but nothing else for this time. When we break camp I will have a more efficient arrangement."

Skuld was sitting uncomfortably on the hard stone, surrounded by the brutish creatures used as slaves and a single guard that kept his sword at her throat. She was stretching out her wrists, rubbed raw by the bindings that had been kept around them. There was a faint amount of light from somewhere, just enough to see at close range.

_Okay, time for some theatrics. Speak in a quiet but imperious voice no matter what is actually being said, and use Danish. We want these creatures to not understand what we say while still making them think you are in charge._

Lars then knelt before Skuld and bowed his head, saying sorrowfully, "Sorry about getting you into this situation."

"Sorry? You saved my life! At least twice, maybe more!" Skuld cried out in an angry tone with a furious look on her face.

The drow all glared at her and Lars immediately said softly, "Please do not speak so loudly."

Frowning, Skuld lowered her voice and said, "You don't have anything to be sorry about. I mean, yes, if I had been conscious I probably would have asked you to find a different method before you… ahem… plugged me in to the local magic, but only because I think it might have been a bit rude to the one in charge of the network. As you said, what you did to me was like CPR. Just don't touch my soul again unless similar circumstances come up. Your 'hands' are kind of clammy."

"Sorry," Lars noted. He then furrowed his brow and asked, "Wait… there's someone in charge of the magic?"

"Yeah, that is why I wouldn't have wanted you to do what you did if there were any other options. I feel a distant mind in the magic, sort of like Yggdrasil, but not. I kind of feel like a hacker who has yet to be noticed by the system admin," Skuld explained.

Leafing through the dissected memories of the drow priestess, Lars said, "The deity in charge of the Weave, as they call it, is Mystra. I guess we'll have to apologize the next time we see her."

Upon dropping Mystra's name the drow all looked sharply at Lars, which caused him to hang his head in exasperation while Skuld frowned further. Lars noted, "I think they might now believe you to be even more valuable."

Aruvixa chose that moment to interrupt, coming up to Lars and saying, "I think you've had enough time with your ward. Now, go take watch at the mouth of the cave and kill anything that tries to get inside."

"Yes highest," Lars replied, dropping out of Danish before walking to the mouth of the cave and sitting down, shutting down most conscious thought while remaining alert. He could probably outwait a star sitting like this, but as it was he only had to wait about eight hours before Aruvixa summoned him back inside the cave.

She had a hand on Skuld's head and a dagger to her neck. "I prayed to the goddess while we rested, and she provided me with the tools I need to ensure your compliance. Now tell her your ward not to resist or this will hurt more."

Lars knew that Skuld understood, but he kept up the charade they had started by saying in Danish, "Don't resist now; she knows that if she tries anything I'll kill her. I'll keep you safe Skuld."

Skuld nodded a fraction of an inch, as much as she could with the knife against her throat, and Lars said, "You may do what you want highest, just remember…"

"Yes, yes, she dies, I die; we've been over this. Now…" Aruvixa then unleashed power she had dwelling within her and channelled it into Skuld. Skuld cried out and Lars tensed to move, but then Aruvixa shoved Skuld away, a sneer upon her lips.

"Ah, now we can act more _civilized._ Your little surface dweller here is now marked for death. At any time, I can activate the spell now residing within her, and she dies. Oh, and should _I _die, she goes with me, so my continued survival is now in your best interests. Don't even try and undo the spell either, as that will trigger it too," Aruvixa explained.

Lars growled, but he noted that he could now at least go to help Skuld up as the sword at her throat was now a metaphysical one, something that he could not get in the way of with his body. He tentatively probed at her mind with his and discovered a pulsing, ugly mark on her soul, one that had buried in deep and he knew that he could not safely remove it.

"You can carry her now; the slaves have better things to do. Now come on all of you, we're moving out. We'll be at Menzoberranzan within another five days," Aruvixa ordered.

Lars picked up Skuld and carried on his back. She was crying. He asked, "Did it hurt?"

Trying to hold back her tears, Skuld said, "I… I… I can feel that thing inside me. It's like the Doublet System, only stronger and more present. It's sitting there, letting me know that any moment it can kill me. Oh god, it's so scary."

"The instant I get this thing out of you, I am so eating her soul," Lars growled. "I'm going to peel her apart, raping every part of her being with delicate care and… oh… uh… sorry about that Skuld. Daemon thing."

"Can I take my mallet to her a few times before you eat her?" Skuld asked angrily.

"I'll hold her down for you," Lars replied.

"You're sweeter than I thought," Skuld told him.

Lars frowned at that but did not say anything.

* * *

Five quiet, miserable days later, during which they started to run into other patrols of drow, although they mostly just breezed past them as it turned out that Aruvixa was the leader of her own patrol, just one with a much larger sweep radius as it extended through several portals.

Then Aruvixa said hungrily, "We're almost to Menzoberranzan now," just as they rounded a corner at a tunnel that opened up into a huge cavern that faintly glowed with flickering magical fires all over dozens of buildings and structures.

Tired from the march and concerned for Skuld, Lars asked, "So this Menzoberranzan place is just beyond this little town, right highest?"

There was a general confused blinking amongst the drow, and Aruvixa said, "This _is _Menzoberranzan."

Lars frowned and asked, "But I thought you said that Menzoberranzan was a giant city, highest?"

"This _is_ agiant city!" Aruvixa insisted. "It's one of the biggest in the Underdark, the crown jewel amongst the drow!"

"Oh. Sorry highest. It looked small to me. Where I come from a community needs to be at least three times as big to be considered a city at all, and to qualify as a big city it needs at least five million inhabitants," Lars replied.

Aruvixa's eye twitched for a moment, probably from considering five million creatures like Lars all packed into a single city, before she said, "It is of no matter. _This _is Menzoberranzan and you _will_ obey every order I give. Understood?"

"Yes highest," Lars replied.

Marching into the city, Lars could already feel the prickle of emotion. This place was old, and treachery and pain and anger and despair and every possible negative emotion had suffused it for every last second. There were slaves being whipped, there were siblings betraying one another, and there were sacrifices being made. It wasn't anywhere close to being stuck in Hell, but it was certainly getting Lars a little high.

They went down the ornately designed streets while passer-bys observed them quietly while trying not to gain notice. At only one time did Lars know he had someone's undivided attention, and that was because he had felt a mind accustomed to psychic combat, barriers raised against Lars' basic probing.

_Interesting._

_Indeed._

The link was then broken as they moved past, but Lars knew that somewhere within this city there was at least one foe that might be able to match him mind to mind.

Moving further along into the city, the group arrived at a compound in a sort of central area beneath a large plateau. Opening the gates upon Aruvixa announcing her identity and the guards seeing her, they were admitted inside. As with the city in general, everything within was overly ostentatious and drow were creeping in every corner, plotting something.

Turning to the group, Aruvixa said to her subordinates in her group, "Take the slaves back to their pens and find some place to store the surface dweller where she shall be comfortable… but not _too _comfortable. You, demon, follow me."

Glancing at Skuld, Lars said, "It'll be alright, I promise." He then nodded to Aruvixa and trailed behind her as she took off.

Following behind Aruvixa, Lars soon found himself in a small throne room of sorts, where an elderly drow woman sat upon a throne made of black basalt carved to appear as a spider brooding at the centre of its web. No doubt this was the leader of their clan, their matron mother, and if Lars' stolen memories were correct, the mother of Aruvixa.

Glancing up, the old drow woman glared at Aruvixa and Lars and snapped, "Aruvixa! I was told you had returned back early, but why do you bring this offal male before me as well?"

Grinning, Aruvixa turned to Lars and said, "This one is not a surface dweller, he merely hides behind that form, _mother_. He is in fact some breed of devil."

Lars obligingly raised his right hand and let it mutate into the sharp, segmented crab leg form he used for combat, while lifting up his head and smiling to reveal his unnaturally broad set of shark teeth.

Raising a now somewhat interested eyebrow, the matron mother asked, "So you found a devil, so what?"

"He wiped out my dear sister's entire patrol group single handed when they had surprise and the advantage of height. He is highly resistant to magic, and in fact is capable of manipulating the Weave directly. Quite the find for the house, no?" Aruvixa gloated.

"And how exactly did such a beast come to follow you?" The matron mother asked suspiciously.

"Oh, I have my ways. The one thing I can guarantee you is that this demon obeys every order I give. For example, devil, kill my mother," Aruvixa commanded rather nonchalantly.

Having expected this, Lars let out a tiny sigh before he went into full eldritch mode, all tentacles and claws and he let out a horrific psychic wail that caused everyone in the chamber to clutch at their heads in pain. They recovered quickly and the matron mother immediately unleashed the first spell that came to mind, speaking a single word.

There was a riotous explosion of energy that washed over the entire hall, doing nothing to the guards that surrounded the matron mother, but it caused Lars to drop in mid charge while Aruvixa grabbed her ears in agony.

The guards were immediately on Aruvixa, but before they could run her through, the matron mother held up her hand and said, "Stop! I will not allow any male to kill my daughter, only _I _shall be given the pleasure. Just restrain her; the effect will wear off in a moment."

Doing as they were told, the guards pinned Aruvixa's arms behind her back and punched her in the face, knocking out teeth and ensuring she would not be able to speak properly around her broken nose and swollen lips. Then they kicked out her knees so that she was kneeling.

Towering over her daughter, the matron asked, "Oh, when will you learn that the goddess has no place with those who are not as chaotic as she?"

Looking up, Aruvixa started chuckling.

"What now my incompetent daughter?" The matron mother asked.

"It was a demon," Aruvixa replied through her broken mouth.

Blood sprayed all over Aruvixa's already soiled face as Lars punched his fist through the mother's chest, her heart clutched in his clawed hand. The guards had a moment to look shocked before Aruvixa noted, "I do believe that I am now the matron mother, so if you would be so kind as to _unhand _me?"

The guards immediately released Aruvixa and prostrated themselves on the floor, even before the previous matron mother's eyes had time to grow dark.

Standing up, Aruvixa brushed herself off and asked Lars, "How do I look?"

"Like you just had your face smashed in and are in need of serious reconstructive surgery, highest," Lars said.

"I was afraid of that. Kill these two for harming the matron mother's beautiful face," Aruvixa said casually.

Scrambling to their feet, the two elite warriors drew their weapons and silently announced that they were not going down without a fight.

"Do you want their skulls for your throne? It's very popular where I come from," Lars asked.

"No," Aruvixa said as she sank into her new chair.

Lars shrugged and hit them both with massive psychic blasts that caused their heads to explode.

"You're _definitely _taking me places Lars," Aruvixa announced cruelly as savoured her victory.


	40. Politics

**Chapter Thirty-nine: Politics**

Rong-Arya sat brooding in their ready-room, thumbing through the reports that had been flooding in over the past twenty-four hours. Very few of them had been good. The _Stiletto _had taken a major shit kicking from the Borg, but not in the way anyone but the crew would have expected. The armour was relatively undamaged, which was unsurprising considering that a major armour break was likely to have simply destroyed the ship outright, and most of the shield generators were still intact.

No, where the battle with the Borg and the subsequent ride through the storm across the multiverse had really hurt them was in spare parts. Thousands of pieces of machinery had been damaged by the surge firing up the Gellar field cold had caused, many of them critical in key ways. Oh, there were organic systems derived from the Angels that could regenerate, but since they were more susceptible to damage in the first place, they were only ever complements or back-ups to inorganic systems. That meant that they had a definite set of problems when it came to resupply at the moment.

Rong-Arya looked over one report that indicated that the ship was simply out of AAA-grade fuses. Trip-As were used by life support, the reactors, and the energy weapons. They had enough amongst stores and in undamaged systems to repair two out of three of those categories. Rong-Arya went back through several other reports and categorized what in those groups could conceivably be saved, and they chose to give the order to have nearly three-quarters of the energy weapons taken off line to restore 95 of the life support machines and 80 of the reactors that could be repaired and needed the trip-As.

Picking up another report, they then passed along the order to remove the giant servo-actuators from half the pillaged guns and use them to get some of the offline lifts going. In what was perhaps one of the more brilliant strokes of stupid genius, some bright lad had decided to make the winch system for the lifts and the servomotors for the guns compatible, if only barely and neither set of machines worked very well outside of its assigned role. The design had initially been considered idiotic for compromising some of the performance of both, but it had somehow passed.

Rong-Arya would personally find the boneheaded engineering team that did that and kiss them when they got back to Earth. There was a large degree of standardization and swap ability between unrelated systems, and it was _exactly _for this sort of thing. The gods had anticipated their ships to be operating alone for long stretches of time so they had demanded the capacity to jury rig them and to let them limp home.

Once they had the nearly a hundred damaged lifts working again, in particular the mass freight transports, they would have a large increase in their ability to affect repairs. They could also start moving a lot of the big pieces of scrap to engineering and the machine shops within and start cutting things up for useful parts and materials to recycle. Aside from the superstructure, the armour, and the biggest reactors, the ship could more or less rebuild itself given the time, energy, and materials.

Of course, energy was a whole other problem. They were stuck in the Doldrums, which presented all sorts of lovely issues in terms of power generation. It was a rule of interdimensional travel that visitors carried their own little bubble of physics with them, but they still had to play by a lot of the rules of current location, especially when interacting. Thus their plasma reactors would work great… right up to the point where they had to try and refuel them with local materials that probably didn't have the same energy density as the exotic stuff they could obtain back home, at which point output would drop. The S2 and S3 engines were only able to feed a tiny trickle of their full power output, their ability to tap the universe nearly nonexistent here.

_Thank the gods for the Necrontyr!_

It was actually one of the greatest ironies of the situation. If it hadn't been for the Great Warding it would have been nearly impossible to develop the technology capable of adapting so well to the lower energy environments that prevailed in the majority of the universes visited so far. Even though the S2 and S3 engines were barely functioning, that extra trickle of limited power but unlimited energy would ensure that they would, given time, let them limp home.

Rong-Arya sighed at the final report, the one they had been dreading to look at. The casualty list; or at least the one from before the attempted boarding by the Cylons. The worst hit area had been the port side launch tube, and associated areas. Sixty dead there. Despite the fact that a medieval army armed with pole arms could slaughter Borg drones essentially forever the things were so slow and stupid, in some of the areas damaged by the fighting, again the port side, there had been wounded individuals who had ended up dead.

Borg nannites and the standard military medical nannites based off of some of Tzintchi and Reigle's designs for Chaos microbes did not get along, and the results were often fatal. Those with mutations often fared better though as the alien physics and biology that went into them really confused Borg technology.

Oh, and they had also lost a few of the daemons working on the outer hull when they went into the Warp storm. The worst had been the loss of Lars, the primary communication daemon. He would have been useful to have around.

Hopefully he had ended up somewhere nice and had found his way back to Earth already. The sometimes morose former fisherman really deserved to catch a break eventually.

What it all added up to though was that Rong-Arya needed to plot a path for the _Stiletto _that would get them home. So far, their interdimensional sensors had given them a little information about the area of the Doldrums they were in. From their energy readings, they had a few options. The first was to see if they could 'cut across' the lower energy places and hope they were headed for home, as it was believed that the energy in the Doldrums was the lower the further from the Cosmic Plane and the Great Wall you got. It was pretty low right now, so they were probably really close to the middle of the region. The problems with that strategy were that they could easily get lost and starve, energetically speaking.

The other strategy was to head in the direction of increasing energy levels and essentially grope around until they found the Great Wall before sliding their way back to a Hub universe then finding a familiar place and hoping back to Earth. The problem was that that was the _long _path and they were certain that they would be travelling in the wrong direction for quite some time. The only advantage was the ability to forage and resupply would be improved by taking that route, and once they found the Great Wall, they would have a navigational point.

Of course, the resupply problem had a flip side. In any universe where they were better able to collect energy, so would any potential hostile forces.

Quite frankly after looking at the reports, Rong-Arya was more inclined to take the shorter, more risky path if it meant that the natives were throwing nukes and high explosive warheads at them with chemical rockets rather than neutronium and singularity warheads at them with reactionless drives. They could sit around storing up energy in the former sorts of places for years without anyone being able to touch them, but if they needed spare parts while in a running battle, they would not have that luxury of time.

A yeoman politely knocked on the open door to the ready room and said, "Ma'am, they're sending over their representatives now."

Oh yes, and there was this other problem to deal with too.

* * *

President Laura Roslin sat quietly in the Raptor as they approached what had been unofficially dubbed in the fleet the 'Hell Ship'. Over two kilometres of mean, already it was starting to light up as it repaired itself. There were scorch marks and cratered pits along its weirdly designed surface, but _none _of them had been inflicted by the Cylons despite their best efforts.

The entire structure of the ship was… _unholy_. Their gun ports, big enough to launch a Viper out of, looked like the mouths of leering demons and gargoyles, while the overall architecture was equally disturbing, aside from just its terrifying enormity. It was the most terrifying sort of alien, for while the Colonies had never produced anything like it, the designers had clearly been human, for it possessed the sort of blocky structure that only humans could love for their warships.

Sliding up alongside the monster vessel, the Raptor lined itself up with a relatively small, yet still enormous, hangar bay open to vacuum and yet within there was clearly a massive assemblage of people, arranged in neat rows and blocks. Hundreds of soldiers, all turned out to welcome the representative sent over, all dressed up in what looked like bright red plate armour from an earlier era.

Those within the Raptor were silent as it was guided down into the bay, except for a startled yelp from the pilot as they crossed the threshold and somehow, impossibly, atmosphere returned.

Then they set down, and Roslin wondered again why she had volunteered for this. Hundreds of faces concealed behind snarling masks set with re-breather equipment were staring at them, at her. Then she remembered. William had initially volunteered, until she had overruled him. They needed someone with high level authority for this meeting, but unlike an admiral who had precious experience and knowledge, she was just a politician and in their situation, ultimately replaceable in comparison to him.

Stepping out of the craft, she looked behind her at the expanse of stars just sitting there, impossibly, and for a moment found it hard to breathe, her throat instinctively trying to shut to conserve what oxygen she had before it was sucked out into the void of space. She fought down the urge though and tried to look presidential as she set foot on the deck plates for the _Stiletto._

A curious thought passed over her face as she realized that the deck felt much like any other space ship and did not make her skin crawl the way she expected. Oh, the gravity was a little different, and the air had a strange flavour to it, but there seemed surprisingly little _wrong _with the place from the inside.

A strange person of indeterminate gender dressed in oddly flowing clothing that obscured its entire form from the top of its head to its feet moved up to the Raptor, and while the marines kept it back, it politely requested in a hissing voice, "May we know the name of the representative sent to speak with our captain?"

"Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies," Laura replied in a clear, commanding voice.

Nodding in an almost reptilian manner, the cloaked figure turned slowly to the assembled soldiers and announced in a boom, amplified voice, "ALL HAIL PRESIDENT LAURA ROSLIN!"

The response was immediate and the force could be felt in the bones, as hundreds of warriors all cried out as one, "_**ALL HAIL!**_" while raising their weapons into the air, a brutish collection of axes and swords and other unpleasantly primitive instruments of death.

Then, on cue, the doors on the far side of the hangar opened up, allowing sixty giants in armour, or at least Laura hoped they were giants in armour and not robots, to pour out and form a pair of lines stretching between the set of doors they had exited out of and the Raptor. There were six unique designs to the giants; each in a group of ten paired up along the lines so that there were six blocks of five along each line. Once they had finished lining up the began raising their weapons to form an archway of crossed swords, axes, and halberds, down which more cloaked figures carried armfuls of heads from Cylon Centurions.

"Tribute to you, a show of solidarity against the Cylons, who so cravenly attacked us both without provocation," the cloaked figure explained as neat stacks were made of the decapitated robot heads.

It was a creepy display, and also a powerful message. The Cylons attacked _you _and the Twelve Colonies ceased to exist; the Cylons attacked _us _and we're stacking their heads up like firewood. These people had a definite air of an older, more barbaric time about them, but they also possessed a great deal of firepower and all of this seemed excessive to try and get her to drop her guard when one considered how easy it would be to kill or kidnap her already.

Not quite knowing what to say, Laura replied, "On behalf of the Twelve Colonies I… thank you for this gift. We only wish we had some way of thanking you in kind."

The cloaked figure said, "You are refugees, those without homes, a state many of those aboard this ship can relate to. Our captain was in fact an orphan in a war zone. We need no recompense for doing the right thing."

That surprised Laura. This ship had suffered damage. Could these people have been driven from their homes too? Although anyone who could do _that _was not someone she wanted to meet.

"Come, come, the captain will meet you in the banquet hall," the cloaked figure said, gesturing for Laura to follow down the line of giants. Reluctantly, she did so, her guards following along behind but no doubt feeling woefully inadequate.

Entering into an elevator large enough to move a Viper, they wait quietly for a moment before Roslin asked somewhat innocently, "Umm… why are you cloaked like that?"

"It is out of consideration for you. We have never experienced anything that could relate to you and the Cylons, so we have different views on certain things than you. We thus felt it best to earn your trust and friendship before revealing certain aspects to you. If you wish I can lift my veils, but please do not be alarmed," the figure replied.

"Umm… what exactly are you afraid to show us?" Laura asked suspiciously.

"Two things: ritual scarification and uh… how to put it that won't cause you to demand to leave immediately? Well… the thing is that we believe that the body you are born with need not be in the same form as the one you die with. Genetic engineering, body modification, and uh… cybernetics… are all used," the figure explained.

There was a very, very quiet tensing of all the Colonials in the lift and Laura asked with that ultimate politeness of someone who now really wants to be very far away, "Cybernetics?"

The cloaked figure shrugged and said, "Our gods hold no sacred trust for the human body, and in fact alteration is considered a holy act. We are soldiers aboard this ship; many of us willingly take enhancements to better do our duty. Nothing is required though, and we are all born human. We are not vat grown creatures, we are not mass produced. We are not like the Cylons."

Laura was very quiet before she said, "Let me see."

The figure nodded and lifted the veil over the head to reveal a human face set with piercings, tattoos, cables, input jacks, a loudspeaker, and perhaps most disturbingly, the left eye had been replaced by a large implant that glowed a dull red. At least it didn't scan from side to side like a Cylon though.

"Would you prefer my implants were less visible, that you might fail to see the machine within me?" The man asked, somewhat rhetorically, before replacing the veil.

Laura _really _wanted to turn and run, but for all their terrible creepiness and disgusting use of cybernetics, they were at least _honest_, as far as Laura could tell. And they may hold the key to salvation, so don't reject their offers just yet.

The elevator coming to a stop, the creepy, cloaked cyborg led them through the darkened corridors of the ship, telling them not to wander off or they would become hopelessly lost. Then, pushing open the doors, he said, "Announcing the arrival of President Laura Roslin of the Twelve Colonies to Captain Rong-Arya of the Chaos Frigate _Stiletto_."

The room was enormous, a cathedral within a warship, only it was made for dinning, as evidenced by the long table set with what looked like small thrones for chairs, with the largest being at the end where a very peculiar woman sat.

First off, her eyes were burning… as in there were _actual flames _coming out of her eye sockets. Second, she had a set of horns growing out of her head. Third, she had clawed fingers. Fourth, _her eyes were on fire_. That one needed to be said twice really. Of the less pants soiling strange features were a tight, bleached leather uniform and some eye wateringly strange iconography.

And then there was the fact that she was holding a small child in her arms, playing with her while waiting. Upon the entrance, the captain looked up and smiled slightly before she said, "We do apologize, but our daughter Cassandra has been rather upset with recent events and we felt it would not do to shirk our duties as a parent for our duties as a captain, especially when they compliment each other so nicely."

It was a blatant and unsubtle move that actually somehow transcended such considerations to move back into the subtle territory. What this terrible creature was saying as she played with the child was that for all of their horrific appearances, they were still people. That they could be gentle with their claws enough that they would not scratch a toddler's soft skin.

A slight frown moving across her face, Rong-Arya said to Roslin and her guards, "Just as a note, we would appreciate you relinquish your weapons while in Cassandra's presence. Child rearing is the most sacred of duties among our people, and should our daughter come to any harm, the consequences for everyone involved would not be pleasant. We have of course already disarmed."

Clever. The Colonials were already hopelessly outgunned, but until they had been brought to the negotiating table they had not had to give up their weapons. Interesting psychological tactic.

Taking an offered seat next to the captain, Roslin nodded to her nervous guards and said, "We're just here to talk gentlemen, I see no harm."

Of course there was harm. It was just that not doing what these people said right now was even worse.

Cloaked attendants moved up and politely took the guards' weapons, to hang them on ceremonial racks brought out apparently just for this purpose. It was all very civilized in an archaic, barbaric sort of way. People had a place to safely stow their weapons for these sorts of things.

Stroking her daughter's hair, Rong-Arya said, "Now, while we're sure you are rather… nervous about people such as us, we will reiterate the offer we made your admiral. When we leave this place and head for our home, Earth, we will take you with us if you wish. We will _not _come back for you though. This is a one time only offer."

Roslin nodded and said, "Yes… I can understand that, but should we take up this offer of yours, would we be able to change our minds?"

"Yes and no," Rong-Arya replied with a shrug, a very curious expression for such a being. "You are free to leave at any time, but your engines are unlikely to carry you back here. Also, once you arrive at our home, you will not be allowed to go about as you wish beyond the confines of our solar system as we are currently in what might be considered a war that one side doesn't know about yet, and thus security is a major concern."

"So this is basically a one way trip," Roslin pointed out.

"For all practical purposes, yes. From here to Earth, if you don't want to die, you will have to stick with us. Once we get to Earth, you may be able to open discussions with our government to make a return trip here, but that is not something we can comment upon," Rong-Arya replied.

"I see. I must admit, that as tempting as your offer is, your culture is pushing me away from it with near equal force as I am attracted to it. So I'm going to have to say: what's in it for us?" Roslin asked bluntly.

"A new home, although there are already people living there you will have to share with, people who do not share your culture. A new home in a place the Cylons cannot chase you to. A world of fresh air and new opportunities. There will be jobs for you all too, of that I can guarantee simply from the fact that there are always jobs. Your soldiers can keep their old jobs but with better equipment, or they can retire to civilian life. Your children can grow up safe and sound with opportunities their parents never dreamed of open to them," Rong-Arya explained.

"And the downside?" Roslin asked.

"You will be but a drop in an ocean. We do not believe in the same gods as you, and while we do not exactly proselytize, there are aspects of our religious life that makes recruitment a very aggressive affair. We do not share the same conflicts as you. In the long run, your culture is very much likely to vanish into ours," Rong-Arya explained.

Sighing, Laura said, "I was afraid of that."

"We actually got into a war about this in the last place we visited before we get lost. Is it better to help a group weaker than yours and destroy their culture from the simple fact that your society is more advanced, or is it better to stand aside while everyone in that culture dies out? Quite frankly, anyone who believes that leaving behind perfectly preserved mummies and ruins free from contamination from other cultures is a _good _thing deserves whatever comes to them," Rong-Arya explained.

"I guess then that will be the discussion I will have with my Quorum when I return to my people: is it better to die here or follow you and have our ways disappear?" Roslin said morosely.

"Amongst our people, Rong is a worshipper of the god of hope. So we say that being alive is better than being dead, no matter the situation, for as long as there is life there is hope," Rong-Arya said, drawing a confused look from Roslin, who did not quite understand the grammar. They had already explained that they were using a special translator, but this did not really make sense, so obviously it was not quite as good as they made out. The captain then said, "Now, before you return to your fleet, might we tempt you to stay for an hour or two to discuss some of the logistics and politics over a nice meal?"

"What are you serving?" Roslin asked.

"Nothing special, really. All of our food on the ship is based off of a mixture containing all essential nutrients, but we can add certain additives to mimic just about any flavour, texture, consistency, and shape you can image. The food isn't quite as good as the real thing, but it saves a lot of space and you can still get a nice variety. I believe the chef tonight made a close approximation of a three course meal with steaks as the main entree," Rong-Arya explained nonchalantly as veiled attendants brought forth cutlery and bowls of soup.

Roslin stared down at hers and blinked. For the life of her, her nose was telling her that she had a light, spicy vegetable soup in front of her, and her mouth began to water involuntarily. It had been a _long _time since she had smelled something this good.

"Ah, I remember that look, although not exactly fondly. That's the look of someone who's been on a poor diet for so long they forget what real food tastes like. If you want, we can share such painful stories for the next few hours instead of talking politics," the captain offered.

Roslin knew that this was still politics, that Rong-Arya was trying to convince her, but damn it, with her stomach grumbling like this, she could at least get a good meal out of it.

"Also, if you want, we can talk the very effective and permanent cancer treatment our people have," Rong-Arya added on.

Roslin's head snapped up and she asked, "What did you just say?"

Rong-Arya smiled in a demonic manner.


	41. Use of Weapons

You're going to want to go to YouTube and search for Gregorian Engel and have it cued up for the first part.

* * *

**Chapter Forty: Use of Weapons**

Aruvixa Roreril, recently ascended matron mother of House Roreril, had given a very simple command: annihilate House Ayaur. She gave no reason for the order, but everyone knew what it was that she wanted. She wanted to do two things. The first was to demonstrate to all of the other clans that House Roreril was in no way weakened by overthrow of the previous matron. The second was to show off the acquisition that had allowed her ascension.

The quiet, eternal twilight of Menzoberranzan was interrupted by a low, hauntingly plaintive whistling, soon accompanied by a strange melody that then morphed into an unusual song, chanted by many male voices all at once.

"Wer zu Lebzeit gut auf Erden  
wird nach dem Tod ein Engel werden  
den Blick gen Himmel fragst du dann  
warum man sie nicht sehen kann"

A serene female voice, one that could only be attributed to a female drow of considerable skill, then joined in.

"Erst wenn die Wolken schlafengehn  
kann man uns am Himmel sehn  
wir haben Angst und sind allein"

The choir then picked up again, singing from somewhere within the shadows in the unknown language.

"Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein

Sie leben hinterm Sonnenschein  
getrennt von uns unendlich weit  
sie müssen sich an Sterne krallen (_ganz fest_)  
damit sie nicht vom Himmel fallen

Erst wenn die Wolken schlafengehn  
kann man uns am Himmel sehn  
wir haben Angst und sind allein"

Those on the wall had brought forward a mage capable of translating any language via arcane means and thus the last few refrains of the strange song were intelligible.

"God knows I don't want to be an angel

Only once the clouds have gone to sleep  
can you see us in the sky  
we are afraid and alone

God knows I don't want to be an angel"

Right as the song was ending did the source become visible, a strange creature that was its own choir, dozens of faces all mashed over one another competing for space, all singing in harmony except for two faces, one a drow woman who got all of the female lines in the song, the other a central face that did the accompanying whistling.

The faces then all disappeared except for the whistling one that smiled mournfully and said, "Fire."

There was a short, sharp explosive bang that hurt the sensitive ears of the drow and bedazzled their even more sensitive eyes. A few seconds later there was a whistling sound, but much harder and more metallic than the soft song of the strange creature, which was now rushing along the dead zone towards the wall.

The whistling ended when the source plunged through the roof of the gatehouse and down into the sculpted stone over the gate itself. Extremely poor quality control actually helped with what the small device had intended, as the detonator failed to go off after first hitting the roof, but when it struck the floor of the gatehouse it did go off.

The gatehouse to House Ayaur stronghold exploded in a shower of high velocity rock shrapnel that scythed into the troops on alert along the wall and in the courtyard around the gate. The wizard brought forward to try and understand the song keeled over dead, a single piece of stone no bigger than a thumbnail having passed through his head and turned his brains to bloody soup. The captain of the guard was in the gatehouse at the moment of impact, and in a single, inglorious instant House Ayaur lost its greatest warrior.

Vaulting onto the wall in a single instant, Lars ripped apart the closest two warriors as they tried to regain their feet after the blast. He then pulled a long harpoon made of bone out of his arm, an act that did not hurt him any, before opening up his mouth wide to reveal the squirming tentacles and pointed shark teeth within and rushed the still confused and disoriented defenders further along the wall.

Lars wasn't a fighter, wasn't a warrior daemon, but every daemon had within it the spark of bloodlust and the instinctive drive to kill that made them so dangerous, and of course Lars had the advantage that he was, quite simply put, an outside context problem for the drow. They needed specialized weaponry and spells to properly harm him, which they did not have.

Already the scaling hooks were up, clinging to the parapet and bringing with them the soldiers of House Roreril. With the gatehouse and the stairs leading from the courtyard and the stairs on that side reduced to rubble, the troops scaling the walls only had to worry about an attack from one direction. And that direction was the one Lars was covering.

Reaching the stop of the wall, the drow soldiers brought their heavy shields off their backs and began to form up into a tight line. The drow predilection for two weapon fighting was fine for skirmishing and raiding, but in the tight, close confines of a siege, heavy shields and short, stabbing weapons was preferable. It had taken Lars a bit to convince Aruvixa to get all of her shield fighters into one formation, but it would hopefully pay off.

Standing atop the corpses of several warriors, the gatehouse rubble in the background, and a wall of steel shields and swords forming up behind him, Lars was a red splattered, yellow coloured daemon of the deep, freezing oceans, salt and sea ice accumulating on flat surfaces around him as he drew on increasingly large amounts of energy to enhance his strength.

As one the lamprey maws that covered his mouth tentacles all began squealing. That was enough for the average soldier to break and run, but a few of the more skilled ones decided to hold their ground.

For a brief moment it looked like their decision to stay had paid off as a bolt of lightning lanced out to crash into the line of troops, only for it to fizzle at the last moment, countered by the Roreril wizards on standby to stop just that sort of tactic from working.

Turning away from the warriors, Lars leapt off the wall and hurled his harpoon at the wizard that had fired the lightning bolt, his invisibility now dropped. The Warp stuff that made up the harpoon punched through the drow's magical defences and impaled him through the stomach. Sending a psychic signal to the weapon, which was really part of him anyway, Lars caused the harpoon to thrash about and sprout dozens of spikes that ripped apart internal organs, causing the flying mage to drop to the ground, dead.

Spying a group of slaves running about in a panic, Lars charged into their midst and dropped his eldritch form, assuming one of his human shapes and changing his 'clothing' to match what the slaves were wearing. He had two objectives. The first was to ensure that the wall was taken. From the sounds of evisceration going on, that was complete now. His second objective was to kill, or at least distract, the matron mother.

Running about, Lars made it to an inner door where one a female cleric from the House Ayaur was exiting angrily. Pointing at him, she demanded, "Iblith! What is going on?"

"Highest I… oh fuck it," Lars noted as he got to within a arms length of the priestess and grabbed her by the face, turning his fingers into probing tentacles that penetrated her mouth, nose, and eyes. After a few moments of wet crunching, Lars dissolved himself away and displaced the fleshy remnants of the priestess with the sick noise of wetly raw meat being forced through a colander by an industrial press.

When it was all over, the priestess stood exactly where she had been in exactly the same clothing, only there was about a hundred extra pounds of blood and finely ground meat and bones on the floor, soaking into the armour and clothing. Making sure to get the mace and his face nicely wet, by pounding the mortal remains of the drow he had eaten, Lars then set off for the matron mother.

He passed through their ranks without suspicion, knowing exactly where to go and exactly what to say, because for all intents and purposes he _was _Mihix Ayaur, although the part of her that was not associated with such memories was currently tied up and being vivisected, integrated into the overall whole that was Lars.

Even Aruvixa's deceased sister Orebe had joined in, for she had ceased to exist as an individual, every last shred of her soul consumed by Lars and transformed into just a piece of the greater whole. Not that it took much for a drow to want to inflict pain upon another.

Passing through the guards manning the throne room, Lars in the guise of Mihix knelt before the matron mother and said, "Highest, I come bearing news of the fighting."

The matron mother of House Ayaur was a canny old crone, and while her house was not very high up, it had been slowly climbing the ranks for the past four centuries under her guidance. As such, even in the midst of battle, especially in the midst of battle, she would not drop her guard to one of her children. Looking at the blood soaked attire, she asked suspiciously, "It goes well?"

"The enemy are but carrion before me highest, but their numbers are sufficient that I have already exhausted today's boons from the goddess. Last I saw before coming here to inform you of the situation, the attackers had taken the southern wall," Lars reported. All of it truthful as well.

"And the reports of some strange magic that breached the wards of the gatehouse?" The matron asked.

"I did not see it in use, but the gatehouse was brought down highest," Lars replied. The thing about mortars was that wards that shielded against magical attack were useless against high explosives.

The other thing about mortars was that so far they only had one shell, and they had used that to blow up the gatehouse. A sustained bombardment would have been nice.

"This does not bode well. It would seem that we must call in our favour early. Cael'al, accompany Mihix and repel the invaders," the matron commanded, causing an enormous brute to emerge from the shadows behind the throne.

_And _that _would be a hezrou_.

The enormous, hulking demon looked somewhat like a cross between an ape and a toad, and actually had the sort of mental defences that would allow for defence against Lars' psychic attacks, along with the brute physical strength to simply smash him flat. This called for drastic measures. Lars had been really hoping not to have to use this…

Turning, he extruded what he needed from out of his body while he said, "Of course highest. Come this way."

The demon, however, was not fooled, and asked, "Wait… what's that in your hand?"

Holding up the now armed grenade, Lars looked at it innocently and said, "Oh, this? Nothing." He then tossed it at the demon while diving away.

Carrying the grenade had been a major bitch as, even in her massively depowered state, things that Skuld built carried a touch of the divine, which was itchy to Lars' chaotic form. Of course, high velocity fragments of divinely crafted shrapnel made of cold forged iron hurt _considerably _more than just carrying the damn thing.

_Especially_ if you weren't Lars.

The matron mother had just enough time to realize that her throat had a large hole in it before blood loss caused her to keel over and collapse. The hezrou on the other hand had taken the brunt of the blast, but was still quite alive if leaking ichor from dozens of wounds that refused to seal.

Abandoning the restrictive armour, Lars went into full on eldritch mode and leapt upon the demon's back before it could recover. Unlike with mortals though, its flesh did not part easily to Lars' claws. He drew upon more energy to strengthen his attacks, and he began to cut long gouges into the thick hide, and he sent his tentacles in deep to cause as much internal damage as possible.

Bellowing in anger, the hezrou reached up behind and grabbed onto Lars, who continued to claw and rake at the beast even as he was torn free. With a mighty heave, the demon slammed him into the floor, producing a crazed spider web pattern of cracks. Lars felt his form crumple and buckle, but he held on and continued to rip and tear and bite into the hand that held him until he sawed off the thumb in a shower of gore.

Bellowing, the hezrou retracted the wounded hand and slammed the opposite into Lars, who took the blow but grabbed on to the fist as it was retracted to start worrying that limb. Flinging him aside, the demon decided it had had enough and began to teleport away. Not standing for that, Lars snapped out a psychic tendril into the folding space-time and disrupted the teleport… messily.

Wiping the gore out of his eyes, not that he really needed his sight considering his other senses; Lars went over to the downed matron mother and ripped off her head so he could present it to Matron Aruvixa as proof of his service.

Also, walking out of the throne room with the head of the person the guards were _supposed _to be protecting had a great way of demoralizing the defenders.

A few minutes later as the siege went into its final, bloody stage the drow leader of the assault, a particularly nasty war mage called Ilaam approached Lars and asked, "Demon, I understand that your senses are tuned to finding the living, correct?"

Lars nodded while sitting down, slowly digesting the Mihix more carefully now that he did not need her face as a ruse.

Ilaam then asked, "Could you then help us find the crèche so that we might ensure that House Ayaur well and truly ceases to exist?"

Lars blinked.

* * *

Within a day of Aruvixa's ascension to the status of matron mother, she had realized Lars was much more valuable when he did things willingly rather than grudgingly, so she had started attempting to supply him with luxuries such as slaves and material goods. That had _sort _of worked, in that Lars only accepted on Skuld's behalf, as he quickly explained that his kind were sterile and technically genderless, thus he really had no interest in a harem of imported slaves. However, he didn't exactly want to leave those handed over to him as slaves to the drow, so he began accepting the gifts given to him on Skuld's behalf.

Skuld wasn't exactly happy either when Lars showed up with a bunch of frightened, naked women of various species bound in chains, but they had quickly figured out how they would do things. Skuld found shackles and manacles 'unsightly', so at her command everything but the slave collars were removed and the women were made her 'handmaidens'. Although considering what had happened to all but two of them, 'maidens' wasn't exactly the right term.

Lars would have sold his left nut, kidney, and lung and both eye teeth, while he was mortal at that, for _one _freaking N2 mine. By the Warp, a MOAB would have probably done the trick in such a confined space.

The material goods he had received also quickly turned into things for Skuld, at first stuff to make her more comfortable, and then stuff to keep her from going insane with boredom and panic, which in Skuld's case meant access to things she could build with.

After the first Skuld Bomb Aruvixa decided that maybe the hostage could be nearly as valuable as the creature she was controlling. Together Lars and Skuld had built the mortar and the grenade, using up three weeks worth of nearly non-stop work to make one shell and one grenade.

Aruvixa had also greatly rewarded them for their work in introducing the Underdark to ice cream, and made the acquisition of cream and sugar a top priority for raiding and trading. And then Lars had identified cocoa beans in a caravan of exotic foods.

Modern chocolate… in a decadent, female dominated society.

It was worth more than its weight in solid, clear, flawless diamond at current production rates. Nobles had been stabbed to death in the streets to get the precious substance. House Roreril's coffers began to swell from the trade.

Chocolate ice cream was still in the experimental stages, but murder rates were already climbing over the rumours.

Thus Lars had attempted as best he could to insulate Skuld from the horrors around her, by giving her the challenge of trying to rebuild all the luxuries of home starting from a medieval basis. It wasn't easy, but at least the alchemists had some _relatively _purified chemicals for Skuld to work with when making explosives for Lars.

However, for Skuld, the illusion came crashing down when Lars walked in and instead of telling her whether or not the mortar or the grenade had worked properly, he just sort of sat down on one of the chairs with an utterly devastated look on his face.

Rushing over to him, Skuld asked in terror, "Did everything go alright?"

Lars looked up and said in a numb voice, "What? Oh… yes. Yes. The attack was completely successful. You're safe. Matron Aruvixa will probably reward me again in fact."

Skuld was quiet for a time, her guts disentangling from the knot they had been somewhat before she asked quietly, "Then why are you so upset?"

"Because I broke the biggest, most sacred rule of my people," Lars said in an emotionless tone.

"That is?" Skuld asked, suddenly feeling very, very small.

"I hurt children," Lars stated.

Skuld was very, very still until the trembling she felt overtook her and her knees gave way. What had happened? Had one of her weapons gone off in the wrong place? Oh god! Had…

"Don't worry, it wasn't you, it was me," Lars explained. "I was ordered to hunt down where the enemy was hiding their children. At best, someone else would have found them. At worst, no one would have found them and they would have died from thirst or starvation, as they were hidden in a sealed room that they would have been unable to escape from. The drow have no compunctions against killing children."

Lars lapsed into silence again while Skuld cried in horror at his story. She hated the drow already, which was why she had been so willing to make weapons to kill their kind, but she had not expected that sort of barbarity.

"Our most sacred commandments are to protect and care for children at all costs. I asked them what they were going to do. Some of the kids were to be taken and raised as members of this house. Most though were to be slaughtered then and there. I could not save them, not while the matron holds you hostage, so I did the only thing I could to protect them," Lars said, signs of breakdown evident on his face.

"What… what… what did you _do?_" Skuld asked in horror, dreading the words she knew were coming.

"I ate them. I fucking _ate _them!" Lars cried out, breaking down into sobs. "I held their little bodies in my hands and I _ripped out their souls!_ Gods _damn_ me, but I did it!"

Intellectually, Skuld knew that Lars was a monster of the worst sort, but he was so kind and gentle most of the time that in the weeks they had been stuck here she had forgotten just the sort of damage he could do, just the sort of horrors he was capable of. And yet, despite the fact that he had done such an atrocious thing, the fact that he was clearly remorseful, clearly felt that he had picked the lesser of two evils meant while hating being forced into the choice indicated that he still had a human heart.

Lars was a total wreck now, blubbering on about how they were "Tiny sparks" and "I just wanted to save them". Finally though Skuld managed to force her feet beneath her and she got on her feet and somehow worked up the courage to hug him. She said, "You're not a bad person Lars, you didn't digest them, right? So they're still around."

"No! That's the worst part!" Lars bawled.

"What?" Skuld asked.

"Oh gods Skuld… I've been trying to figure out what to tell you for weeks now. Skuld, have you been feeling more aggressive and blood thirsty lately?" Lars asked, looking very, very small for a man who had just killed a hezrou in hand to hand combat a few hours ago.

"I'm surrounded by blood thirsty scumbag slaver elves; I think being a bit more of a bitch than you used to attribute to me isn't much of a stretch," Skuld replied firmly.

"See… that's the thing, it's not just that, and your language shows it. I've been worried since we talked back in that cave, but I'm about 95 certain now that when I hooked you up to this world's magical field there may have been a tiny, accidental swap of soul material. For you, that would manifest in some… more daemonic proclivities. For me on the other hand… uh… boy, this is hard to say. If you don't kill me your family certainly will," Lars said while looking extraordinarily embarrassed and small.

"We agreed that no harm was done and you were just trying to… save…" Skuld began before the look on Lars' face caused her to trail off.

"Skuld… my experience in Hell wasn't good for me. I picked up a lot of negative emotions that I compacted into a tight ball of darkness, and it formed a little proto-daemon that I could have slowly digested… right up until the point where we swapped a little bit of our souls and the piece from you mixed with it. Skuld… I'm _pregnant_, and technically, you're the _father_," Lars explained, before adding on, "You have no idea how sorry I am about all of this."

The look on Skuld's face was indescribable and bordering on the non-Euclidean.


	42. Hawks and Flies

**Chapter Forty-one: Hawks and Flies**

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Skuld stuttered out, "You're _pregnant?_"

"Well… technically now that I think about it, 'pregnant' is a somewhat inaccurate term but…" Lars began before Skuld interrupted him.

"But that's _impossible!_" She cried out.

Lars was quiet for a moment before he shifted into Mihix's form and looked down, noting, "Oh hey, look, boobs and a twat," before he shifted back to his male form and said, "No wait, it's a flat chest and a pecker now."

Skuld glared at him for a moment before he said, "Sorry. I'm trying to feed the growing daemon some more positive emotions but its thrown my equilibrium off."

"Wait… don't tell me that-" Skuld began.

"_No. _I said that the term 'pregnant' is inaccurate. I will not be having mood swings or cravings or anything like that, those are all unconscious, physiological responses. I am in full control over what I am doing; it's just that by my nature I'm affected by these things. So right now I've got a much shorter temper because I've been trying to ensure that I don't feed any more rage into the damn thing, it already has enough of that already. I'm more morose than usual because I've been letting a lot of hope flow into the forming entity, but that means I'm also having a hard time seeing the brighter side of life," Lars explained.

"You know, I never really understood how exactly you work, and now that I'm going to be a mother-" Skuld began.

"Father. You're going to be a _father_, in that your contribution was merely inheritable material while I actually gestate the offspring… and don't give me any 'seahorse' crap, cause if you want to get that technical then male/female distinction is determined by gamete size and you would be the male in the relationship again," Lars explained.

"This is so weird," Skuld replied.

"Tell me about it. I suppose its time for you to learn about the hawks and the flies," Lars said with a defeated sigh.

"Hawks… and flies… what the…?" Skuld asked in confusion.

"Birds and the bees only for daemons," Lars replied dryly.

"Oh. This isn't going to be fun, is it?" Skuld said with a displeased look on her face.

"Well, sort of. The way my kind makes more is relatively clean in comparison to the more organic methods… except for one method that usually involves a whole lot more spilled bodily fluids, but we'll get to that. There are four kinds of ways in which new daemons are made, although in this instance it might be considered four and a half… but we'll get to that in a moment. Anyway, the four methods of daemonic production are natural coalescence, budding, ascension, and sexual recombination. Of those four, _one _doesn't involve our gods," Lars explained.

"I'm guessing natural coalescence, judging by the name," Skuld noted while sitting on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Yes, this is what I will be focusing on. The other methods, in short are; budding, which involves one of our gods breaking off a small piece of their essence to make a beast or lesser daemon; ascension, which involves one or more of our gods taking a mortal and remaking them into a daemon, like how I got this job; and sexual recombination which involves two or more of our gods combining their essences into a unique new pattern to create a greater daemon. You will note that the gods are all required for these tasks, as all lesser beings are incapable of such acts," Lars explained.

"But…" Skuld began, trying to point out the obvious.

"I'm getting there. The fourth method, the natural method, doesn't require the gods, but that's not a good thing. You have to understand what exactly a daemon is though. A daemon is essentially a… standing wave of emotion I suppose would be the best descriptor. You get a sufficiently large bundle of psychic energy compacted into a small enough space, and it starts reinforcing its own structure. This obviously isn't possible where you come from, but where I come from the laws of nature are different," Lars explained.

"Wait… how does psychic energy accumulate?" Skuld asked.

"You need a _lot _of it. It's sort of like a gas in a vacuum. For the most part it will just dissipate out, but occasionally you get enough of it in one place that gravity starts to draw everything together and boom, you get a star or a planet, or in this case a daemon. The problem is that certain emotions have different wavelengths and amplitudes. Emotions that have the same 'wavelength' reinforce one another and add to the substance of a growing proto-daemon. Emotions with different wavelengths destructively interfere and cancel each other out. Strong amplitudes have more 'mass' than weaker ones, and thus tend to accumulate faster. The whole process favours simple emotions felt in large quantities by a large number of people at once. Things like fear, anger, hope, passion, and despair, these are the most basic fuels for natural daemons," Lars explained.

"Hope? That-" Skuld began.

Lars gave her a blank look that cut her off and he then said, "Famines, plagues, wars… what do you think the vast majority of people are doing?"

"Praying for salvation… oh dear," Skuld said, suddenly getting what Lars meant.

"Yeah. The problem isn't so much the emotions themselves so much as the fact that once critical mass is achieved the first things natural daemons want to do are to start feeding to increase their power and propagate their kind. They do this by manipulating their fuel source: mortals. Your basic natural daemon is a psychotic animal of genius intellect that can only comprehend spreading pain and misery according to its nature. They tempt, corrupt, drive insane, and kill everyone they meet, depending on their mood and how useful a mortal is to them. It's not a pleasant set up," Lars explained.

"How come you're different?" Skuld asked.

"Two things. The first is that I am an ascended daemon; I started out as a human and I retain a piece of my humanity, so I can control my impulses the same as a human can, and must, control instinctive responses. The second is that my people's origins are rather complicated, but it is safe to say that only the gods have created daemons thus far, and we take a different tack to ensuring our food supply. We prefer healthy human minds to deranged ones, for while the intensity of emotion is much lower, it's no where near as toxic to our state of mind. And that's where we return to what exactly has happened with me," Lars said.

"This has to do with your stay in Hell," Skuld stated.

"Oh yeah. The emotional content there was… not good for me. If I had just drunk it all in I would have lost my mind and developed a 'burn, maim, kill' attitude towards life, something that while perhaps cathartic while dealing with some people, is not exactly the way I wanted my life to go. So I took all of that emotion pouring into me and I bound it all up so I could take my time processing it. I would turn blind rage into righteous anger, turn lust into love, turn despair into tolerance, and turn avarice into hope. Unfortunately, by shoving all of that emotion into a tight little package within me without absorbing it into my self, I created the conditions for the creation of a natural daemon. There wasn't _quite _enough there to achieve critical mass, but…" Lars trailed off.

"Then a little piece of me got in you and reached the undigested stuff. I see what you're talking about now," Skuld said.

"Makes sense? Yeah, and now the little bastard has started to try and feed on me, but I'm controlling what it gets… except for the souls of the kids. Oh gods…" Lars said, his morose mood returning. "For the most part when I eat a soul I rip it apart into its constituent components and memories and then integrate into my total identity. All individuality is lost, although I can bring the pieces back together as easily as a human can hold their breath… easier in fact. I didn't want to do that to… unfortunately the growing creature inside me wasn't so picky; hence I get a double dose of guilt."

"And if you hadn't done anything?" Skuld asked.

"They would have been butchered anyway. I still don't have to like it, and in fact I'm _glad _I don't like it. If I _liked _it then I truly would be damned. As it is, I can probably argue my way into a couple millennia stuck in a toilet scrubber rather than eternity stuck in the Halls of Torment," Lars replied.

"Well, yeah, but… well, what exactly is going to happen next? When will the new daemon be born?" Skuld asked.

Shrugging, Lars said, "It's achieved semi-sentience already at this point, but in order to survive out in the open it needs more energy. About a hundred adult human souls are required to make a minor daemon, but as it is I'm not going to be feeding it any more souls if I can help it. Child souls don't have the memories and emotional content of an adult, so two or three magnitudes more children would need to be fed to it. Which I'm _not _doing. And if I fed an adult soul into the developing daemon then the first personality would become dominant, and I'm _not _unleashing a daemonic drow on the world, nor am I eaten a good person. So its just going to get raw emotion until such point as it is self-sufficient, so that its own identity can be developed."

"Do you need me to do anything?" Skuld asked.

"Not until after the birth, at which point I probably will need your help handling the 'little darling'. It picked up a _lot _of negative emotion, so it's going to be pretty evil at first, but if it follows the pattern of the children of the gods, then it will show fanatical devotion to both parents, at least for the first couple of years," Lars explained.

"How 'evil' are we talking here?" Skuld asked.

"If I give it the right diet during gestation… oh… it'll probably bring you 'bad' people's heads to try and make you happy," Lars stated.

"That bad huh?" Skuld asked.

"Yeah," Lars deadpanned before going silent again.

There was a quiet pause between them before Skuld asked, "So how long will this take?"

"At least I year I think, if not more. It's a slow process," Lars said.

"Is the waiting going to drive me nuts?" Skuld asked.

Lars paused for a moment before his features changed into those of a middle aged human woman who said, "Dear, take it from me, the waiting will drive you both nuts."

Skuld blinked a few times before Lars shifted back and then she asked, "Who was that?"

Smiling faintly, Lars said, "My wife. She died twenty-five years ago when the gods ascended, her soul claimed as part of the sacrifice to fuel their launch into divinity, while I was spared. We actually have a rather sombre holiday on that anniversary, Passover- although it's nowhere near the old Jewish version- where those of us who were there remember what it was like."

Skuld was quiet while Lars was lost in thought before she asked, "What exactly was your wife talking about there?"

A pained look crossed Lars' face before he sighed and said, "Back before an event called Second Impact, our Earth was much like yours: relatively prosperous and peaceful. Oh, there was crime and poverty and conflict, but in general you could probably take a map and a dart and if you hit land the place wouldn't be consumed in destruction. Then Antarctica blew up and everything went to hell. My wife was six months pregnant with our first child when that happened. The stress… I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

Skuld nodded. A puzzled look then crossed her face and she asked, "Wait… why don't you separate your wife into the new daemon?"

Lars looked at her and asked, "Would you enjoy giving yourself an at home lobotomy? It doesn't work like that now. My wife is an integral part of me now. Sure, I can draw together the pieces, I usually do when it's quiet, but who she was is part of who I am. It's actually kind of masochistic, in that all I can talk to _her _about are her memories, because anything beyond the day she died are _my _memories. Trying to talk about current events with her is just talking to myself with a different voice."

"Wow," Skuld noted.

"I know. Sucks to be me, huh? But still, I love my wife and I'm not going to part with her. It's why I got so pissed at you for trying to interfere with your sister and Keiichi. You love your sister, but you've never felt what its like between lovers like them, and you can't comprehend the pain of not being with them. You haven't lived half a century in a little shack on the Baltic knowing that the guys who took the person most precious to you in the world have taken over. You never had to work your fingers to the bone supporting the monsters in charge until finally deciding to throw in with them. And… I'm sorry, do I sound bitter?" Lars said, the last bit coming out sarcastic rather than apologetic, and as he continued to rant his features aged considerably, until he was a sea tanned, wrinkled old man.

Skuld's eyes went very, very wide as she watched Lars' mood darken considerably. Finally she decided to ask quietly, "Do you want to make some ice cream?"

Getting up, Lars said, "Fuck it, I _do _want to make some ice cream. Enough moping around, I need to balance my diet and some joy and laughter, even if it's just from you Skuld, would be greatly appreciated."

And so they made ice cream.


	43. Brewing Trouble

**Chapter Forty-two: Brewing Trouble**

The Roreril family fortress rang out with the sounds of growing industry, disturbing the quietly treacherous nature of the city of Menzoberranzan, while the stink of brewing organic chemicals and molten metals permeated the air. The neighbours were growing anxious, but the destruction wrought already was enough to keep them from challenging the suddenly upstart minor house without risking enough damage to make themselves vulnerable to other houses. A coalition could take them down, but first a coalition had to be made amongst the treacherous drow.

And every day Roreril was left alone, they grew stronger, making an alliance harder to forge. The ruling houses had yet to have the new weapons and horrors of the Warp turned upon, and just considered it all some form of magic, something they felt confident they could deal with. After all, you couldn't _stockpile_ magic in a meaningful way.

The production rate was painfully slow, but when they had the resources, Roreril could make about one shell a day, although resource supply was often restricted. Of course, when not making high explosives, propellants, or other such sundry materials, they were making high quality trade goods. A gallon of fresh ice cream in Menzoberranzan could get you the supplies to build a dozen high explosive shells, which was enough to destroy the majority of the fortifications in a house… including the top eight houses.

Hells, Roreril didn't even need to do a direct assault. If they blew up the walls of a fortress from long range natural drow behaviour would take over as the opportunists would be all over the stricken house like rats on a corpse.

Quite simply put, the city's days were numbered, and only Lars and Skuld knew it was coming. Aruvixa was drunk on power, she could taste the way here little empire was growing, the way her two acquisitions were giving her power overwhelming. Lars had become the topping rather than the cake with Skuld running around, turning her genius and divine catalogue of technology towards the task of making it easier for drow to kill each other. They had quite literally jumped hundreds of years, bypassing enormous theoretical and developmental hurdles. Oh, they were still many, many years away from building the tools that could build the tools that could build the really nasty weapons in mass quantities, but there were all sorts of little examples.

Like steel production. It had been quite amusing to watch Skuld verbally berate, in Danish, centuries old drow smiths with millennia of traditions backing them up for their incompetence at working with iron and even more amusing when she showed them just how bad they truly were. Oh, they were skilled at what they did, do be sure, but their methods had nothing on what sound theoretical background on mixtures of iron and carbon could give rise to.

But the drow just didn't understand what they beheld. To them it was all just another form of magic, another tool to be used against the enemy, another method of showing individual superiority. For such a long lived species, they could be remarkably short sighted. Like how their constant internal competition would _always _keep them under the earth, away from the power of the sun.

Like how their infighting was making them weaker with each passing year, consuming their energies pointlessly and killing off the masses of the average in favour of the few excellent.

The drow were doomed as a civilization. The addition of high explosives was just going to accelerate the process.

While contemplating such things, looking down at the industrious courtyard while leaning on a parapet, Lars glanced over at Skuld devouring her ice cream and asked, "How can you stomach to eat that with the fumes around here?"

"I get _one _bowl a week and not enough time to eat it elsewhere," Skuld replied in annoyance while hugging the bowl protectively against her chest.

Once she had finished up, she glanced over at Lars and asked, "So what are you being all silent about?"

"Oh, just contemplating life, the universe, and everything," Lars replied.

"It's a number. I checked. I have to maintain the program," Skuld replied.

"Where you're from maybe, but I was thinking in great, overarching terms. For example, how utterly fucked the drow are," Lars said.

"I give it a year before they realize that slave hands can fire a howitzer as easily as a drow hands… which will also be the point where the slaves rebel and everything blows up," Skuld said dryly, switching to Russian from Danish in case any of the people who had picked up some the language working with her were listening.

Snorting, Lars said, "They're teaching the human slaves, with drow oversight of course, to fire the cannons because they've spent centuries learning to fight in single combat and they find the guns… unfair, if useful. We're industrializing a slave holding society… they won't survive the process. Guns and explosives are too much of an equalizing force and slavery is too inefficient of a system to keep up with industrialization. They also need the population granted by industrialized agriculture, unavailable down here away from the sun, to make any significant gains in the long run."

"Want to lead a communist revolution?" Skuld asked.

"Nah, I grew up just as the Cold War was ending, so communism still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Then again, I'm also from Europe, so a little socialism doesn't frighten me. Of course, any sort of bloody, violent revolution would be nice so long as it's successful. What do you say? You start penning the book as theoretician and I can be the charismatic leader and future dictator for life. Skuldist-Larsism they'll call it," Lars replied, sweeping his hand out as if trying to dramatically picture the future.

"Will I get to complain about how you've altered all of my ideas and say, 'I don't know what I am, just that I'm not a Skuldist?'" Skuld asked.

"Of course, because where would we be if poorly thought out ideas were not abused and made even worse after being thought up?" Lars asked.

"I don't know. But who gets to play Mao?" Skuld asked.

"Oh, probably a surface nation with plenty of agriculture but little industry," Lars replied.

"Will there be awesome hats?" Skuld asked cheekily.

Lars was very quiet for a moment before he cried out, "De hats! How could Hy hef forgot de sveet hats after all des veeks? Quickly, ve musht hef sveet hats!"

"Can't you just alter your form so that you have a hat?" Skuld asked.

"Yes… but _you _can't. Come now, we have enough resources and pull that I think we can pester someone into making what we need," Lars said.

Half an hour later the best transmuter in the house, who had already been placed under Skuld's supervision because of his ability to rapidly fabricate items with his magic, had created what Lars wanted.

"I've got to admit the hat _is _really sweet," Skuld noted as she adjusted the hat. "But doesn't this send the wrong message?"

"Nah, no one would get it," Lars replied. "We'd have to invent Russian style communism first. Now all we need are bolters and chainswords and the look will be complete."

"I think if I took a month I could _maybe_ make a crude, inefficient approximation of that monstrosity you described," Skuld said in annoyance while checking out her new greatcoat. "The chainsword though? Not in _this _world any time soon."

"Don't bother, until you can start making at least Semtex it wouldn't be worth it," Lars replied in a blasé tone before he thought for a moment and said, "And now I do believe it is time for me to go blow up another hedge wizard for the matron mother's amusement."

"I'll go see if we got another load of hydrocarbons I can crack with the crude distillation rigs I've built so far. We should be able to start making incendiary shells with the flammable liquids we get out of that," Skuld said.

"Mmmm… napalm, it's what's for breakfast," Lars said before leaving for the ritual chamber where Aruvixa ran her experiments with Lars.

Within was a small, tightly sealed and warded chamber where Aruvixa brought young, promising mages before Lars to see what he could do with his ability to directly manipulate the weave. Today she had a fresh faced new recruit looking to join up with the rising star of Roreril… and probably also get some revenge in on some other drow. Their stories were all the same in the end.

Not that they lasted long anyway.

Looking over the mage with his other senses, Lars contemplated what he would do to this one before he paused and noted that Aruvixa was looking at him. He asked somewhat cheekily, "You like the new look, highest?"

"It is less… brash, I must admit," Aruvixa noted.

Lars smirked at the thought of a 'commissar' being called 'less brash'. Last bastard with the kick ass hat he had met had been back in the early days when the planet was being militarized and he was forced to attend militia training. Ah, good old Commissar Hugger, only one person had to ever question the intimidation factor of his name before everyone else fell in line quite nicely.

"Mostly it's for the hat, because you can't have the hat without the accompanying uniform, and people dig the hat, highest," Lars replied.

Aruvixa considered the hat for a moment before she nodded and said, "You're right, the hat _is _worth it. A wardrobe change may be in order."

Lars considered a female drow priestess in a commissar's uniform and laughed for quite some time inside his head before he said, "In any case, shall we proceed with the experiment for today, highest? I believe we agreed that the subject should not have any spells prepared at all this time." Lars also conspicuously changed his uniform out to his rain coat, something that was actually mirrored by the other drow in the room as they put on oilskins, except for the test subject.

They had learned their lesson.

"Yes, it has already been made apparent that having no spells currently prepared is essential to the continued wellbeing of our new wizard," Aruvixa said, glaring at the wizard, who had a stoic expression on his elven face.

Selecting a tiny strand of the Weave with a psychic claw, Lars noted, "Trust me on this one, kid, you had better not have anything in your head when I do this. Everything in here is non-stick cookware for a reason."

Lars then cut the strand and shoved the raw end into the mage's soul. The other end was quickly grounded in the wards and quickly repaired itself, but as for the mage, something different happened.

For one, he did not exploded, unlike the last seven weeks worth of experimentation.

Unfortunately, the second bit was that he promptly started screaming and dropped to the ground, frothing at the mouth.

"What went wrong that time?" Aruvixa asked dryly.

"My bad, highest," Lars said with a shrug. "I was trying to avoid doing something I would rather not do and I think he got a glimpse of my mind during the process. I think it drove him a little mad."

"Will he recover?" Aruvixa asked her advisors.

There was a collective shrug and Lars said, "He might be able to block it out and forget what he saw."

"What did he see?" Aruvixa asked.

"My homeworld," Lars replied. He looked down at the twitching wizard. He had seen were cities of glass and steel on the surface filled with millions of humans, all wielding casual abilities of unimaginable power… _before _the addition of the Warp. A single regiment of such humans could destroy the entire drow civilization without much effort. It had shattered the elf's arrogant ego.

Aruvixa looked down at the twitching mage and said, "I really must visit one day."

"Oh, I would love for you to come over, highest," Lars replied with the utmost sincerity. He knew that whatever happened to him when he got home, he would at least be allowed to see her punishment given out first if she came with him.

* * *

Oghma had felt a strange stirring somewhere in the Underdark, in that someone was involved in a great deal of invention down there, a fact confirmed by his subordinates. He would have to take a closer look at what was going on, as there was a strange slipperiness to the situation that kept him and his underlings from making a casual observation.

Maybe he would also ask Mystra about the rumours of strange things happening with the Weave down there after the big meeting of the gods Ao had just called.


	44. Calm before the Storm

**Chapter Forty-three: Calm before the Storm**

Leaving the room behind, Lars was surprised when one of the mages approached him quietly, away from where Aruvixa could hear. He was a strange one amongst an often eccentric breed, a specialist at summoning forth swarms of scuttling spiders, and it was rumoured, other, stranger entities. He had undergone a ritual scarification, leaving his face marked with lines that suggested the outline of a spider, and he often had several of his pets crawling about his body at all times, hidden beneath his deep robes.

"Rask?" Lars asked quietly.

Nodding slowly and oddly, the strange wizard said, "Yes… yes… I would speak with you of… things… yes, things."

Stepping into one of the many secluded alcoves, Lars peered intently at Rask and asked him, "You wanted to talk about something?"

"Yes… yes… I have been considering you… you are not a demon… no… no, you are something different. At the least… you are not a tanar'ri… no… you are at least an obyrith… a primordial demon… yes… but I think you are something else… yes… I think you are from not the Abyss but the Far Realm… yes…" Rask explained in his oddly sibilant speech.

Lars looked at him blankly and asked, "And what of it if I am?"

Smiling, Rask replied softly, "The Spider Queen holds no place in my heart… no… no… and yet I do not wish to end up in the Wall of the Faithless… no… so I have been making pacts with other powers… yes… powers from beyond. If I am damned… I would wish to choose my hell… yes… yes. I had thought that perhaps the madness of the Far Realm would suit me for my afterlife… yes… but now I wonder if perhaps… perhaps… my lot would be better off with you… yes… yes."

Lars blinked and then he asked, "Are you asking me to claim your soul?"

"One day perhaps… perhaps… I would serve you until that day though… yes… yes… I would serve well. Do you like my work?" Rask asked, reaching into his robes and pulling out a tiny chitinous horror, what appeared to be a daemonic spider, all eyes and fangs and hooked legs. "I have long enjoyed the company spiders… yes… but as I have learned of their alien minds I have found a greater need… yes… need… for further refinements to their forms."

_Then we should speak more privately. I do not seek followers, but I do seek aid for my ward Skuld. You understand that she has a spell binding her by pain of death to Aruvixa?_

Rask nodded quietly.

_Then assist me in helping undo what has been done. I do not trust that you are not some plant for her, but even she should realize that this is my goal. So all I wish is that you find me information on what might undo the spell, and I shall judge from there._

Nodding, Rask said, "Yes… yes… most prudent. I shall see… yes… thank you for your time."

Returning the horrific spider to his robes, Rask bobbed his head and slipped away, leaving Lars to consider the implications of all of this.

Wandering out into the halls, he noted that a curious entourage was arriving at the gates, a trio of drow with minds that his standard psychic senses bounced off of. They immediately glanced up and stared right at him.

_So this is the creature._

_Most interesting._

His face passive, Lars replied psychically. _I see, so there are a few psychics in this place._

_Indeed._

Sighing, Lars headed for the audience hall. Aruvixa would probably want him in attendance for this one.

* * *

Jarlaxle discovered much to his amusement that he was in audience with the very recently ascended matron mother of House Roreril. It was to his amusement because such a previously minor house now had the resources to actually start making offers to Bregan D'aerthe, and because for once they probably knew more about his organization than he theirs, due to the fact that over the past few months any spies he sent tended to end up vanishing without a trace.

And here he was now, in an audience with Matron Aruvixa and an envoy from House Oblodra, a very curious meeting made all the more curious by the creature standing next to Aruvixa's throne. To all outward appearances he was a surface dwelling human dressed in some _very _snappy clothing, but Jarlaxle could feel his enchanted eye patch warding off near constant psychic intrusions. At first he thought that the creature was actively trying to break into his mind.

Then he realized that the damn thing was probably just automatically doing it. The psychics from Oblodra were looking rather ruffled all at the same time, indicating it could either attempt to peer into all of their heads simultaneously or that psychic senses were as automatic to this creature as vision was to any being with eyes. Either way, it indicated a great deal of power.

"Ah, my guests, I am so glad you could make it," Aruvixa said everyone had finished arriving. "I do hope that you are currently wondering why exactly I have both of you here at the same time."

Neither party accepted the bait, although House Oblodra obviously bristled at being invited at the same time as the male mercenary company leader.

"Lars, please show them the claymore," Aruvixa said.

Nodding, the strange creature picked up what was most definitely not a sword, but rather looked like a sort of slightly convex box and brought it before them. He said, "It's been disassembled so you can see the inner workings." He then lifted off the top plate to reveal hundreds of silvery spheres closely packed together, held in place by a sort of resin.

"What… is it?" The representative from the third house asked.

"It is a claymore anti-personnel mine, although most of the words have different meanings from what you probably expect them to mean," Lars stated.

"Tell them what it does," Aruvixa replied wickedly.

"This current model is somewhat underpowered in comparison to a true claymore as ideally we would want to use some form of plastic explosive, but we have been able to make due with other forms of high explosive. The current configuration fires seven hundred steel balls at approximately three times the speed of sound in an effective lethal cone approximately fifty yards wide and two yards tall at fifty yards. The maximum range is roughly two hundred yards with this model," Lars explained.

Jarlaxle caught on first. Every little ball in there had the potential to wound or outright kill anything it hit, and it had a spread bigger than the cone of fire of a great wyrm red dragon. Against a formation it could cause dozens of casualties as those murderous little balls cut through flesh and bone. House Oblodra also quickly caught on. You always brought wizards to a battlefield not because of their ability to do area damage, but to _counter _the enemy's ability to do so. This _couldn't _be countered; it was 'just' alchemy.

"How many do you have?" Jarlaxle asked nervously.

"Two dozen," Aruvixa smirked. "At the suggestion of my demon, we started producing these at the first possible opportunity due to the fact that they are excellent defensive weapons, especially against large numbers of enemies. Also, tell me Lars, what is the range on the howitzers?"

"The long range howitzers, when loaded with high impulse propellants rather than the more plentiful black powder shot, are capable of hitting any point in Menzoberranzan from the House Roreril compound, although ranging shots with solid slugs enchanted for location are recommended to conserve the high explosive rounds," Lars reported sharply.

"How many howitzers do we have capable of doing that?" Aruvixa asked.

"We currently have three built, with the primary limiting factor being the production of the ammunition for them. Currently we have a dozen high explosive shells for each howitzer, along with two high explosive armour piercing shells and several incendiary shells in production. We also have enough propellant for two dozen solid shots spread amongst the howitzers, and if we switch to black powder we have enough propellant and shot for four hundred rounds, although the range is significantly reduced," Lars stated crisply.

The smug look growing over her face, Aruvixa asked, "And the effects of an anti-magic field on all of these devices?"

"None whatsoever. We have already checked during live testing, the presence or absence of magic has no effect on the shells," Lars replied.

"So a force bunkered in a compound protected by anti-magic fields could, theoretically, bombard any target in Menzoberranzan and have relative impunity?" Aruvixa asked.

"Most certainly. The only viable methods of attack would be massive swarm tactics and/or psychic powers, which are not affected by anti-magic fields. Thus strategy would be to either align with any such force or neutralize them before engaging in any military venture," Lars replied.

Enlightenment dawned on the envoys from House Oblodra. "You wish our aid in destroying another house?"

"And the aid of Bregan D'aerthe, well known for their skills. Perhaps you should ask your matron whether or not she would like to rule Menzoberranzan, with House Roreril as number two?" Aruvixa asked, beaming broadly. "With the failure to capture that rogue Drizzt and his subsequent destruction of the House Baenre chapel, I do not believe the First House retains enough of the Lady's favour to stop our combined forces."

Jarlaxle frowned. This had the chance to be spectacularly good for him or extraordinarily bad. He would have to think long and hard about which side to throw his weight with, because if he chose wrong the consequences would be catastrophic.

Before he could reply, a sudden look of confusion passed over Aruvixa's face and she said, "I am sorry… something just came up. Lars, go check the perimeter immediately."

Jarlaxle wondered what had spooked the young matron, although he suspected it would make choosing his side easier.

* * *

Ao had not exactly planned on doing what he did, but damn if his underlings had not really pissed him off this time. When he found who had stolen the Tablets of Fate, he would ensure their punishments were…

Ao blinked as he realized he was being summoned. Only one creature in the entire multiverse had that power, and they had already had their centennial discussion just a few decades ago. Ao had been planning on contacting him early to enact the changes he planned after this latest mess, but being contacted in turn early was rather unexpected.

Slipping away to a far corner of his realms, one that no being in the entire multiverse but he knew about, Ao waved his hand and engaged the link that connected him to his distant superior officer.

A holographic image appeared in the middle of the hidden chamber, showing a large, imposing face set with many lines that could be described of as wise, and a large patch concealing the empty eye socket.

"Ao, I have a job for you, one that needs your utmost attention," the Almighty proclaimed.

"Umm… can it wait? I'm kind of in the middle of a management issue with my underlings and…" Ao said, a sinking feeling filling his soul.

"Ao! This isn't something that can wait. One of my daughters has gone missing, you hear me? She got sucked into the Void," the Almighty exclaimed.

"That's… unfortunate," Ao replied nervously.

"She was protected by a creature from the Void. We know that she survived, and by their trajectory we are almost certain that she landed within your domain. _Find her_," the Almighty ordered.

"Are you sure that she landed here, because I'm really quite busy at the moment and-" Ao said before he was cut off.

"I said _find her! _I know how incompetent you've been with your own creations, but I swear, if you don't find my little girl, the first thing I'm doing is cutting off your access to the Yggdrasil codes you need to run your little bubble of stability in the Void. The _second _thing I'm doing is finding a way to announce that whoever finds her and keeps her safe and sound gets your job. The _third _thing is to get a battalion of Valkyries and Einherjar, mount up on Sleipnir, and find you so I can shove Gungir so far up your ass it will knock out teeth. Do you hear me Ao? I'm talking old school, face smashing, blood eagling wrath of the Norse here Ao. _Do you understand me? _I have put up with your shit for millions of years, and I am _not _going to let you screw this up. Not with my _daughter _on the line. Now, I don't care what you do, _find her _and _protect her _until I figure out a way to get her home. She should be travelling with a creature from the Void, I want him alive and well too. My baby Skuld however gets top priority," the Almighty roared.

Ao remembered the old days, when he was still a subordinate to the Almighty, before the Sundering and Ao's displacement. He remembered what the Almighty was capable of when he got riled up.

"I'll do it right away. But you do know that all divine senses are blind to entities such as your family…" Ao began before trailing off at the glare from the Almighty.

"I don't care what you have to do, _find her_. Put up a bounty for your petty gods to squabble over. Put up a bounty for the _mortals_, I don't care," the Almighty ordered.

"Ah… about that…" Ao said.

"Ao…" the Almighty growled. "I swear that if it weren't for the fact that I haven't been able to physically get to you, I would have smacked some sense into you a long time ago, starting with the mess you made with Shar and Selune. Well now we know it's possible to cross the Void, so you had better start shaping up or I'm bringing you home to where you were an _office clerk! Shape up!_"

"Yes sir," Ao grovelled.

"And find my daughter!" The Almighty roared.

"Yes sir," Ao begged.

"I'm going to expect frequent updates on this one," the Almighty stated.

"Of course sir," Ao replied, still cowering.


	45. Siege

**Chapter Forty-four: Siege**

The industries of House Roreril had ceased their incessant pounding five days ago, reducing Menzoberranzan back to its preferred state of a low susurration of half heard voices whispering rumours and conducting business. But it was not business as usual, for the past five days had been tense ones, with much scrambling about by all parties as they tried to discern why the Spider Queen had gone silent.

Then why _all _the gods had gone silent.

The air was charged with fear beyond the usual tinge. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, for someone to make a move. It was only a matter of time.

The drow had no proper conception of thunder. Oh, their wizards could conjure forth lightning, but for the most part those bolts were paltry things in comparison to the true fury of a summer's storm unleashed. They had never truly heard the apocalyptic crash of air displacing.

Until now.

The silent Roreril compound's courtyard suddenly issued forth a trio of explosive bangs that grabbed the attention of the entire city, for nothing like that had ever been heard before.

A few seconds later a trio of hard iron spheres, specially enchanted with a modified form of the antimagic field spell, slammed into the House Baenre compound, shattering once enchanted stone. One shot smashed into the central family living area, crashing through a door and then bouncing on a manic pattern through the halls, killing two orc slaves and an unlucky minor priestess that had been moving towards the door to see what the banging sound was. The second hit the main barracks and just stuck in the stone, the shrapnel wounding a minor soldier. The third struck the still being rebuilt main chapel and demolished a statue of a priestess.

All around the three shots there were little pools of darkness where the faerie fires that coated the stonework had gone out, snuffed by the antimagic fields on the cannonballs.

Back at the Roreril compound diviners hired specifically for this task, or rather hired and not told exactly what it was that they were doing until the first shots were fired and they thus had no way to back out from an attack on the First House as they were already involved, used their magic to discern the effects of the initial ranging shots. Mages loyal to House Roreril had already been used to make the final corrections on the howitzers with a less expensive form of divining magic.

The natural radiation of Menzoberranzan and the wards about the House Baenre compound made scrying difficult, especially on the living members, but those were immaterial problems in that the mages only wanted to see what parts of the compound had been hit and they could judge by the extinguished light.

"Barracks shot was on target," one of the mages reported.

"Living area on target but went deep inside the house," a second replied.

"Chapel area on target," the third announced.

Nodding, Skuld said sternly, trying to hide just how upset she was by the cold, clinical violence she was perpetuating, "Reload, and keep the same settings as before. Like we instructed, the sequence is high explosive, incendiary, and then fragmentation. If a shell fails to detonate, continue with the sequence anyway."

The loading crews, human and dwarf slaves selected for their quick learning ability and proficiency with machines, had already been swabbing out the hot barrels, ensuring there were no sparks. The howitzers were ugly, inelegant machines, muzzleloaders trying to do the same job as breechloaders, but Skuld didn't trust the industry they had built yet to be able to make safe, reliable breeches.

Meanwhile, much closer to the destruction, Lars watched from a concealed position and noted quietly, "Nice shots."

_Is momma doing good? Momma kill bad people?_

The tiny little daemon growing within Lars had within the past few days of heightened emotion developed enough intelligence to begin communicating with him, and it was about as innocently bloodthirsty as a baby daemon could be. Lars and Skuld had also settled on gender pronouns and decided that for the sake of sanity they would go with what required less explanation to confused people later.

Although they had decided that when they first talked to Skuld's family they would call her father at first to give them enough time to explain before the smiting happened.

_Momma's doing well; she's setting up to kill lots of bad people. Now stay quiet little one, poppa has to assassinate someone._

_Yeah!_

Crouched at the edge of the compound along the fence, Lars carried the one rifle they had decided to make. A brutish gun, it could only be carried by someone with Lars' daemonic strength and only fired well by someone with his intelligence. It was a .50 calibre rifled breechloader that took brass cartridge rounds. It could fire a 600g steel jacketed lead armour piercing bullet at about twice the speed of sound.

It was a beastly creation that had sucked up a lot of time and effort to make, but Lars could handle it and knew what to do with it.

A series of explosions rocked the House Baenre fence, causing the metal strands to sway back and forth. Kobold slaves from House Oblodra had just planted demolition charges around several of the posts, demolishing a massive section of the fence. Since the Spider Queen had gone silent the magic controlling the fence had died out, but it was still a barrier and if it unexpectedly powered back up that would not do for it to remain a danger.

The shuddering boom of the quartet of less advanced cannons, brought up with the rest of the army fielded by Oblodra and Roreril under cover of magical concealment in the past few hours, signalled the doom of the main gate. With the loss of the fence, House Baenre's days were probably now numbered whatever happened. The other drow houses would see this as a massive sign of weakness and start circling like sharks about a bleeding seal on an ice floe.

Lars intended to club that seal a few times and then kick it back in the water.

"Come on… come on… yeah, your personal magic isn't working, but you've still got magic items, right? And you're basically a medieval warlord at heart, right? So you have to _see _what's happening. Oh, you might usually have your own magic so you can stay in the safety of your throne room, but unless you want to rely upon a _male _you're out of luck. Come on…" Lars whispered silently, urging his target to appear.

Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre stepped out on to a viewing balcony.

Lars smiled at the inefficiency of the loading crews. They could take up to three minutes between each shot, and if the high explosive shells the plan called for had landed the matron might not have stepped out like she did.

The rifle didn't have optics, but Lars didn't need them. His psychic powers let him reach across the gulf of the multiverse, with some mechanical help, and make contact with other minds. When outside her compound, Yvonnel was like a sparkling gem in the sun, as were those around her.

Lars aligned his rifle, adjusted for the drop, and fired. The range was about four hundred metres, plus or minus five percent, and the height was maybe twenty metres above his position. Some of the souls that had made him up, especially the other northern Europeans, had been hunters in their lives. With no wind, no breathing to foul his aim and such a flat ballistic profile for the powerful gun, the shot was well within Lars' ability.

Still, he technically missed. He had been aiming for Yvonnel's centre of mass as the magic about her would probably warp the path of the bullet so he needed to make sure it went where he wanted it to. Unfortunately, quality control was still abysmal by the standards Lars and Skuld were used to, and the bullet moved faster, and thus dropped less, than Lars intended.

Then again, to say he missed was to say that instead of hitting her in the torso, he instead hit her square between the eyes with a .50 bullet still travelling faster than the speed of sound. There was a brief flash of light as the magic items that surrounded her body in layers of force and distorted space attempted to turn aside the bullet. Yvonnel had protection exceeding that of full plate armour. The gun in Lars' hands would have been classified as a light anti-material weapon where he came from.

To say that the daughters and guards standing around the matron mother were shocked when the thousands of years old leader of their house suddenly had her head violently explode was an understatement.

Lars broke open the breech and let the smoking cartridge fall out as a tentacle brought the next round up and slotted it into the hot barrel. Snapping the whole assembly back into place, he cocked the hammer once more and aligned with the next target on his list: Triel Baenre, the first daughter of Yvonnel.

This time he missed his targeted area while still hitting scoring a lethal strike again, overcompensating for the previously high round and striking Triel lower than he intended, just barely missing the stone banister of the balcony in his estimation. Still, with a round that big the shock of having one of her kidneys and the surrounding pieces of liver and intestine blow out her back, along with the hydrostatic shock that destroyed her heart and lungs, Triel died nearly as quickly as her mother.

Not pressing his luck any further, Lars immediately abandoned his position and made for the main Roreril/Oblodra camp to report his success. Besides, he was down to his last round. The things were damned difficult to make when everything else was demanding resources.

For now.

A contingent of driders, freaky things that looked like a cross between a drow and a spider along the lines of a centaur, lead by a spider covered Rask, were already assaulting from the roof of the cavern, while the battle between the wizards of Baenre and the psychics of Oblodra was heating up.

Oh and a dozen invisible mages no doubt heading off to attack House Roreril. The fact that the high explosives shells had landed and reduced rock to flying rubble and severely weakened the structural integrity of several buildings probably had something to do with their heavy response.

Pity for them Lars didn't need his eyes to see them. Finally his last shot, the most difficult really as he was attacking a flying object, landed in the centre of mass and sent the remains of the wizard's heart and lungs and bits of rib and spine flying off into the darkness.

Lars grinned with satisfaction as the flight scattered, shocked by this unexpected attack. The dead body suddenly appearing in the air also alerted the attacking forces to their presence and anti-invisibility forces immediately went to work.

Rejoining the main army, Lars met up with the artillery forces, transforming his outer appearance from camouflage gear to a commissarial uniform, although he gave it his own personal touch by liberally adding barnacle encrustations and the appearance of being waterlogged. If there was any way of making a commissar look scarier, it was to make him look like a drowned, undead commissar rose from the ocean depths, not even death keeping him from kicking ass.

"How goes the battle?" He asked while handing his gun off to a servant, a slave really but he made sure every individual turned over to his or Skuld's care was treated with as much respect as they could get away with under the circumstances.

The incendiary rounds chose that moment to arrive. Two of them failed to ignite on impact, a problem they had anticipated might arise, but the one that hit the broken rubble of the barracks went up in a spectacular fireball as a mixture of gasoline, kerosene and a thickening agent ignited.

A few seconds later the one that hit the main family living area also ignited.

The drow had thought that they understood fire. They were wrong. Ever since Prometheus had made his gift to humanity, fire had been _theirs _to master and control. No other species had ever relied upon the flame so much, had learned from it and respected it and used it the way humanity did.

The drow did not face the radiant heat of lava or the solid burning of a wood fire or the instant burst of heat from a wizard's fireball or a dragon's breathe. No, this was hot, hungry flame that stuck and burnt, that flowed and dripped and was hot enough to cause fat to weep out and burn like a candle. This was _napalm_, or at least the closest thing they had to that destructive, sticky stuff. There wasn't much of it in each of the shells, but what they did fire scared the hell out of those facing it.

The drow noble in charge of supervising the cannons shrugged and said, "It goes well. You succeeded in your task?"

Lars nodded and said, "The matron of House Baenre and her heir are no more."

The officer smiled and said, "Then Baenre is no more. Its leaders are slain and its defences are being destroyed. All that is left is to subdue the twitching body."

Lars frowned and said, "That is always the messiest part. And House Baenre still possesses a number of powerful mages, enough that they might wound us with their death thrashes, such that other houses look to our forces with the same eyes that we looked at House Baenre."

"With House Oblodra we will…" Lars did not hear what the noble said next for his attention was suddenly taken away by his otherworldly senses suddenly picking up something _bad _about to happen.

Lars was in communications, but his abilities also leant him to doing crude sensory work if the situation called for it. He knew what a warp storm looked like. He knew what the sudden surge of energies could do, especially to those sensitive to them. _This _wasn't quite the same, for it involved the Weave instead of the Warp, but it was similar in structure.

Lars blinked for a moment, those all staring at his blank eyed expression before he said in a panic, "Cease all magical operations, now! Tell the psychics to batten down as well… no, I don't care if you understand that word, just tell them that we need to stop everything we're doing _right the fuck now_. Go on the defensive and stay out of the air. Cut off all spells. Just tell everyone _no magic_, you got that? I need to warn those at House Roreril."

Taking off at a run, Lars launched himself into the air, shedding most of his outward appearance for the horrific bat-thing form that carried him along until he arrived at the Roreril compound just in time for the trio of howitzers to go off in the courtyard, throwing the fragmentation rounds that would hopefully play merry hell with anyone trying to extinguish the burning napalm.

If they were really lucky they would hit a mage wasting dispels against the fires that only spread when water was thrown on them.

At least they hadn't tried experimenting with magic to make chlorine trifluoride. The ability to make something that could cause _sand _to burn wasn't worth the risk of making something that could cause _sand_ to burn.

Crying out, Lars said, "Cease all magic _now! _Something bad is about to happen."

"What is the meaning of this?" Aruvixa asked as she stalked out of her observation shelter.

"I can feel a… wave… of magical distortion approaching in the Weave. I would not want to have any arcane magic going when it hits," Lars explained.

Aruvixa looked at him suspiciously for a moment before she glanced over at her nearest wizard advisor and asked, "What do you think?"

The wizard hummed and hawed for a moment before he nodded and said, "Master Lars may not have a firm grasp of the theory behind Weave magic, but his instincts and abilities are beyond what we wizards can dream of possessing. If he says something bad is going to happen, I say we trust him highest."

Nodding, Aruvixa announced, "Shut down all use of arcane magic, now. With any luck this will damage House Baenre. Speaking of which…"

"They are dead, Matron Aruvixa. The head has been taken from the serpents, so to speak," Lars replied as something niggled at his senses. He could feel arcane magic shutting down all around him, but there was still a strong signal from…

Lars turned to Skuld who was looking incredibly frightened indeed.

The artificial connection was still there and still actively drawing energy from the Weave to sustain Skuld. Skuld had a pained look on her face. Approaching her, Lars whispered, "What happened?"

"The… the goddess in charge of magic here just died, and it's damaged the system," Skuld replied back, tears starting to well up in her eyes.

Lars raised an eyebrow and he asked, "Is there anything _you _can do? You're a… you know…" They had fastidiously not spoken of her true nature, the risk of someone overhearing.

Skuld shook her head. "No, I can feel the damage. It will take some time to repair, time I don't have. I can't shut down the link… Lars I'm scared. There's a huge wave coming for me and…"

Lars shut his eyes in pain before he said, "I can sever the link. We can ride it out."

"It's not going to stop until the damage is repaired. That could be _months_. That could be forever. And I don't have the same reserves of energy I did when I arrived," Skuld replied.

_Is momma going to be okay?_

_I don't know._

Finally Lars said, "There _is _an alternative."

"What?" Skuld asked.

"There's… another Weave, it's in between the gaps, lying under the one everyone seems to know about… but the fact that its pretty unknown and its much darker seems to make it more dangerous in my mind," Lars replied.

Skuld looked at him and said, "Do you think it would work?"

Lars nodded. "Yes, I can feel the energy in there when I examine it. We need to make this decision quick though, the wave is going to arrive within a minute."

Skuld was quiet before she nodded and said, "Do it."

A psychic knife sliced through the connection Lars had made between Skuld and the Weave, which caused her to immediately drop to her knees as she began to burn through her only personal supply of magic at a ferocious rate.

Then the wave hit and everything relating to the arcane went wild. Faerie fires burned painfully bright or were extinguished, the ring of heat about the city's central pillar Narbondel went erratic, and general chaos took over. It was particularly bad over at House Baenre where they were using extensive magic to try and contain the damage inflicted and counterattack. The results were not pretty, to say the least. Oh, sometimes the magic was magnified spectacularly and sometimes it fizzled, and sometimes it went out of control and destroyed the caster while other times something completely random happened.

"It's raining daffodils… remind me to kick the ass of whoever was in charge of this…" Skuld noted weakly as she collapsed.

"Duly noted," Lars replied grimly as he sliced open a piece of the shadowy version of the Weave, completely unaffected by the disaster, and spliced it into Skuld with the hopes that the dark, oily energy was compatible with Skuld's divinity.

Lars got his response right away as Aruvixa started to praise him for saving the house from disaster. He watched the dark energy surge into Skuld and rapidly undid the spell that kept her bound to Aruvixa. Lars did not have time to jump for joy though, as that was not the only thing that happened.

Skuld went into a convulsion as the colour started to drain from her face and her veins began to go starkly black beneath her skin. Weeping, she said, "Oh… oh Almighty! I can feel her mind! She's jealous! She's jealous!"

Grabbing her, Lars forced her up and made her look him in the eyes. He asked, "Who?"

"The one in charge of this magic! She's so dark… so jealous… so evil!" Skuld cried out.

Lars looked at her and said, "Then kick her ass if she's evil! You've got a bit of daemon in you, if you're going down, go down swinging! And show that medieval bitch what computer science means Miss Norn of the Future!"

Skuld looked at Lars for a moment, her face twisted in pain; before she began to mutter under her breathe a series of algorithms, incredibly complex formulas and instructions that were part computer programming, part quantum physics, and part fundamental reality editing.

"What's going on? Why can I no longer feel the spell in her?" Aruvixa demanded angrily.

Lars looked at her and considered a dozen possible things before he decided Skuld was more important… and deserved her shot at revenge. He walked up to her, backhanded her hard enough to send teeth flying, and then said, "I'll deal with you later. For now, anyone who wants to interfere with Skuld here goes through me."

Going back to Skuld, Lars could see the connection between her and the shadows grow and evolve at a rapid pace as she sought to do what had not seemed necessary before: hack the system and boot out the previous administrator. Magical energy flowed into her and then spilled out in the form of shadows. The symbols on her cheeks and forehead morphed about and faded from purple to a deep, almost black, violet. Her hair seemed to grow longer and darker while gaining a life of its own, becoming a flickering thing.

Lars could only watch on as the whole thing took place, ensuring that nothing happened to her. Everyone else watched in awe at the strange transformation.

Tears were starting to flow freely down Skuld's face, evaporating as they fell into wispy shadows that disappeared quickly against the darkness of Menzoberranzan. She paused in her incantations for a moment to say, "She's so much more powerful than me."

Having gone through the souls within him to glean some sort of knowledge for Skuld, Lars said, "It's Shar, right? Shar is the goddess of darkness."

Skuld nodded as her body was wracked with another tremor from the effort she was putting into it.

"Use her portfolio against her," Lars replied. "She is the goddess of _loss_. Make her _lose _this. Make her lose _everything _if you can. Attack her mind. Let her know that everything she cares for will be taken from her… and oh dear, I do believe that this battle is yours and yours alone from this point on."

"What?" Skuld cried out in horror as Lars took a pained step back and fell on his ass.

A twisted look crossing his face, Lars said, "I do believe that another sliver of your being transfer over at some point between cutting you off from the Weave and splicing you in to the other version, and it was enough to finish the maturation process for the one inside me. Oh boy… this is going to hurt…"

A strange spasm passed through Lars' body, one that would have been physically impossible had he been constrained by bones or three dimensional physics while a strange sort of un-light poured from his eyes and mouth for a moment.

"Yup… those of you who have not seen the movie _Alien _should probably look away. Those of you who have should probably run screaming right now. Does anyone want to look after Skuld for a moment while I lay down and scream for a bit?" Lars noted through glazed eyes that were starting to wander about his face.

Surprisingly, one of the dwarven slaves assigned as a loader, a poor bastard named Steb who had his throat cut out years ago but had somehow survived and continued to live despite a missing voice box, stepped up to help support Skuld. Aruvixa, now unsteadily regaining her feet, looked ready to try and order her terrified troops to attack, but before she could make the attempt to snap them out of their stunned awe Steb walked up to her and beat her back down before returning to Skuld.

Sometimes it _really _paid to be nice to the help.

Skuld's whole body tensed up as she fought mind to mind with another goddess, it came as something of a relief for Skuld when her wings, followed by all of her angel, burst out of her back.

Skuld had gathered enough power to manifest Noble Scarlet, and now her angel had joined in to the mental assault on Shar, adding a wordless song to the most epic hacking in the history of the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately she too seemed to sicken with exposure to the Shadow Weave.

Thrashing about on the ground, Lars managed to force his bubbling, frothing form into a semblance of stability long enough to ask, "What's wrong?"

Her teeth clenched, Skuld replied, "My angel… she can't handle the shadow magic. She's a being of light, not darkness."

Manifesting a single stable mouth, Lars said, "There is always light in darkness. Think of a lunar eclipse and how the moon does not go dark but turns red in the umbra." He then destabilized again as his amorphous form began to ooze and stretch, a face on the inside pressing against his skin in an attempt to get out.

Skuld was silent for a moment before she said, "Scarlet in the umbra…"

Noble Scarlet let out a loud wail and then was no more.

She was no more because she had been transformed into something else, something new. A tinge of shadowy grey had seeped into the white feathers of her wings; her blonde hair had gone dark like Skuld's; and her skin had become like the palest, finest alabaster. But not all the colours had seeped away, for her eyes glowed a brilliant copper red like the most spectacular lunar eclipses, and she seemed bathed in a halo of such light.

Skuld was the Norn of the Future, the Goddess of the Undiscovered Country. The secrets of what was unknown were _hers_. The future lay in the shadows, in the tiny, lightless realms of quantum mechanics or the vast gulfs of space between the stars. From the tiny slivers of the daemonic she had received from Lars she remembered the _Stiletto _in the endless voids of space or the Warp.

Far away in the Underdark, the avatar of an ancient greater goddess screamed in agony as the Shadow Weave, _her creation_, was forcibly ripped from her and she was locked out of it by secrets she could not understand. For all of her divine intellect, Shar was still limited to the methods of thought Ao had allowed, and she had never conceived of the sort of cryptography Skuld threw her way.

In a flash Skuld completed her transformation as she tied herself into the Shadow Weave and became its new centre. Her hair was still the flowing shadows, but if you looked hard enough at it there were tiny points of light like stars, a reminder that even in the darkness there was still light if you knew where to look. Her angel's hair was similarly ethereal.

Everyone had stumbled back in terror as the transformation took place, except for stubborn Steb, who remained next to her in silent vigil through the entire thing, loyal to Skuld and to Lars' request.

With a final psychic cry, the thing inside of Lars exploded out with a burst of otherworldly light and indescribable colours and landed with a wet plop on the ground next to him. All in attendance not blessed with daemonic or divine resilience promptly forgot the horrid form as it quickly shifted to a much more pleasant shape; that of a female drow child possessed with rather strange eyes, dark as the oceans, and pale marking on her face reminiscent of those that Skuld had. She 'wore', as much as daemons could wear things made out of their own essence, a loose sort of gown and her white hair was unbound at shoulder length.

Oh, and she was currently wearing a hungry grin that would make a shark turn and run.

Pulling himself back together, Lars grabbed on to the child's leg and said, "No eating anyone right now dear."

The little daemon turned to him and gave him the saddest look imaginable and pouted, "But poppa, I'm _hungry!_"

"Yes, but we like some of the people in here," Lars replied before he looked over at Skuld and asked, "Are you alright?"

Inhaling deeply, Skuld nodded and said, "Yes… this will take some time to process properly, but Noble Umbra and I should be alright. Ugh… there are so many little errors in this system…"

"We'll find your mallet, wherever it went, and you can debug it later. Right now though, I do believe that some revenge is in order. You or me?" Lars asked Skuld.

Skuld tilted her head to the side before she said, "I want to get to know my daughter first, and I think you got it worse what with the baby eating and the pregnancy."

Nodding, Lars said, "Fair enough." He then turned to Aruvixa with an enormous grin and said, "Hey Aruvixa, did I mention that my charge here was a _goddess _from another world? Since I'm feeling in a bit of a generous mood what with just _giving birth_, I'll give you what you've always wanted. A long shot at _unlimited power_. How's that sound?"

Seeing the writing on the wall, Aruvixa asked fearfully, "Unlimited power?"

Lars shrugged and said, "Indeed." He then grabbed on to a piece of the Weave that was in a low state and jammed it into Aruvixa, being careful not to swap bits of soul with the bitch. Her eyes went wide as she felt the new trickle of power in her and the insight into Lars' mind and what he had seen and experienced… and how utterly outclassed her entire civilization was against true power, power wielded effortlessly by humans of all creatures.

A moment before the energy surged back up to full power, Aruvixa understood what she had been dealing with and could only let out a tiny terrified whimper as she soiled herself, the very same crime she had her sister executed for all those months ago. Then the strand surged back to normal size and beyond with the latest ripple in the Weave and Aruvixa was carried away, her soul consumed by the raw magic and carried away, leaving only a burned husk of a body behind.

Once the steaming corpse of the previous Matron Mother hit the ground, Lars asked, "Does anyone _else _without the ability to handle raw magic straight to the soul want to piss me off today?"

* * *

Far away, a tiny creature looked up in surprise before twitching its rabbit-like face and going to where it had stashed its one treasure. In its wake a small squadron of enormous dark green spiders followed, their colouration more invisible in the darkness than pure black. The shadow spiders followed the tiny creature with the loyalty of those who knew their place in the pecking order and what both defiance and obedience brought.

Think was back!


	46. Departure and Arrival

**Chapter Forty-five: Departure and Arrival**

Striding on to the bridge, Rong-Arya sank down into their command throne and asked cheerfully, "How are preparations going?"

"The ship is at maximum readiness ma'am. Our course is charted and the first step is programmed into our navigation computer. All that is left is for a reply from the Colonials as to whether they want to follow us into the Warp," Ichiro-Faust reported crisply.

"And the engineers?" Rong-Arya asked.

"They've already got the Gellar Field set up to help shield the Colonial ships or for normal operation, as necessary," Ichiro-Faust reported.

"Excellent. All that is left is for their reply. Lieutenant O'Hare, please inform the Colonials that we are ready to depart and that they have one hour to make their decision to us known," Rong-Arya replied in a bored tone.

"Transmitting now ma'am," Lieutenant O'Hare replied.

* * *

The debates of the past few days had been fierce, the press coverage oily and backstabbing, the whole affair one long, nasty, drawn out fight over the two dominant philosophies amongst the refugee population of the Colonials: fight or flight. After New Caprica, after seeing what the Cylons still had in reserve, and after everything they had been through, the vast majority of the population wanted to just keep running until they found somewhere the Cylons would never, ever find them.

But then again there were still those who held out hope that maybe one day they would return to their homes. That there was a friend, a family member, a lover, a child still waiting for salvation in the grips of Cylon occupation and if they just fought a little harder they could save them.

And somewhere amongst these two forces there was the fact that many of the Colonials simply did not trust these strange, barely understood newcomers. The long range pictures of the monstrously sculpted, titanic ship had made the rounds like wildfire, blurry images of colossal turrets shaped like screaming demons and structural members that had been crafted to look like tortured souls in the depths of some terrible Hell.

Thus, there were four camps. One group that wanted to take their offer, one group that wanted to leave them and run, one group that wanted to get them to eliminate the Cylons, and one rather deluded group that thought that they could take on the Cylons without help.

The masses were in favour of getting these new comers to eliminate the Cylons so they could all go home and rebuild their shattered lives. The upper levels of government and the military on the other hand knew that the _Stiletto _had its own problems to worry about and would in no uncertain terms stick around and tried to make that fact clear to the angry, scared populace. The alien warship from Earth could not be bargained with, could not be told to help them.

Thus after a great deal of arguing, the remnant fleet found itself going to the polls once more to decide what to do, only this time there would be no tampering with the ballots, no matter how much the administration might not like the will of the people. They had suffered enough problems _last _time they did that.

So here it was, the decision: keep running on an uncertain course that no longer had an end point, or follow these strange and terrifying people to the promised world of Earth. The phrase 'rock and a hard place' came to mind.

Of course, for Roslin, sitting and waiting for the results to come in was only about the fifth most terrifying thing in the past two days. The fourth had been watching the colossal battle between the Cylons and the _Stiletto_, although the alien warship had considered it a light radiation storm combined with recreation during the boarding phase.

The third most terrifying thing had been boarding the _Stiletto _and meeting its creepy, unnatural crew and being told the conditions of the deal. Worst of all had been the captain, Rong-Arya, saying, "We have turned lying while telling the truth into an art form, letting people's own fears and judgements shape the facts into the story they want to hear and we want them to hear. Of course, telling you this is part of the process, and I leave it up to you to figure out _how _this is shaping your impression of me. As is that statement. And that one. And so on and so forth. It's really a quite amusing game to play, don't you think?"

They were devils with silver tongues, but they knew when to approach people with the right offer at the right time.

The second most terrifying thing in the past two days had been sitting on the cold, uncomfortable examination table wearing a flimsy hospital gown waiting for Dr. Cottle to return with the biopsy test results, to see if the gift from Rong-Arya had actually been true and not some trick.

_The _most terrifying thing however had been asking the strange creature that commanded the _Stiletto _about the cancer cure only for an enthusiastic veiled man to approach her, saying how it was a joy to work for the Mother and he would gladly take her burden as his gift. He had been disturbing and intimidating to say the least, speaking of the cancer that was slowly killing her as 'a naughty child who can't play nice with others'.

He had then reached out a filth encrusted hand out of the shroud concealing his body and grabbed her by the wrist, punching a twisted, broken, rotten yellow thumbnail into the blood vessels there. Before Roslin or her security detail could react however, she _felt _the cancer in her body migrating through her arteries, seeking out the intruding thumb and joining with the disease already present. He then withdrew his thumb, leaving behind not a scratch and began humming pleasantly.

An utterly blasé looking Rong-Arya had then said, "Only those who want to get sick do so where we come from."

What miracles. What horrors. Where these creatures sent by the gods or were they demons sent to lead them astray? Roslin had no idea, not when the report came back that said that not only was her cancer gone, but her blood work was clean of all harmful pathogens and even residual traces of diloxin. It was as if her entire body had been swept clean of poisons and diseases.

For now. As Rong-Arya had said, "Who knows when you could get sick again? You obviously have the risk factors."

So Roslin waited for the results of the referendum. Everything waited on that result.

* * *

Tapping their clawed fingers on the edge of the command throne, Rong-Arya asked, "Have they decided yet?"

"We've got some inter-ship chatter as they count up the votes, but nothing definitive yet ma'am," O'Hare replied.

"Five more minutes then," Rong-Arya noted dryly.

"Going to go early or late?" Ichiro-Faust asked.

"Late of course, we might be chaotic but we're not complete dicks," Rong-Arya replied indignantly.

However, at two minutes before the deadline a communication channel opened up and Admiral Adama's voice was heard over the radio saying, "On behalf of the fleet, I would like to announce that the decision has been reached and the Colonial military will abide by the decision of the people. As such, while individuals are free to follow the _Stiletto _or stay behind at their discretion, the _Galactica _will follow or stay as the people demand."

"Looks like we'll be bringing a few people along either way," Rong-Arya noted away from the pick up mike.

There was a moment's pause before Roslin's voice was heard over the channel as she said, "Before I announce the results of the referendum, please allow me to make it clear that as with the military, the political apparatus will follow the decision of the people, and despite any personal feelings on the matter, we too will do as the people request of us and maintain a unified front."

"Sounds like they're staying," Ichiro-Faust mused.

Pursing their lips, Rong-Arya replied, "Perhaps they are… and perhaps they know how contentious the issue is and are thus outlining beforehand that they are forming a unified block to prevent people on the losing side from leaving _en masse_. If their little fleet is split in half the outcome would be… disastrous for them."

Ichiro-Faust thought about this for a moment before nodding in agreement.

There was another moment of silence before Roslin announced, "Having counted all of the votes, we have a 53/47 decision… to follow the _Stiletto _to Earth."

"I don't think she liked that decision," Rong-Arya noted. "I guess her belief that we are monsters outweighed her desire to be free of disease and to have a home again. Ah well, you can't please everyone all the time. Please begin sending directions to the fleet on how to form up with us as we activate our drives. Oh, and remind them once again that this is going to be a long trip."

"They already informed us that they recently stocked up on food and other consumables when we laid out the plan for them to consider," O'Hare pointed out.

"It bears repeating in any case. Where we're headed the highest form of energy storage is probably anti-matter. Ugh… artificial gravity without forward or rotational acceleration, not for me thanks," Rong-Arya replied.

"Technically that's just simulated gravity," Xavier pointed out.

"Shut it. Let's get this show on the road; we don't want to spend any more time in a backwater universe than we have to. Makes our skin crawl in such lower energy places," Rong-Arya replied in an annoyed tone.

* * *

"So we're really doing it," Adama commented as the _Galactica _formed up close to the monster ship, the rest of the fleet in similar positions all within four hundred metres of the behemoth.

"Doesn't feel frakking right," Tigh commented bitterly. "We shouldn't be leaving."

"Perhaps not, but where else do we have if we don't follow these people back to Earth, where else will we go now?" Adama asked sadly. How strange for a lie to transform into something like this. Perhaps it there was some truth to how lies could take on a life of their own if left alone too long.

Staring quietly at the DRADIS read out for the monster as it began to do something to local space-time, William wondered what his lies to inspire hope in the survivors had spawned.

* * *

For a long period of time, about fourteen billion years or so, give or take a couple hundred million, the most interesting thing to pass through a particular patch of space was the occasional rock-ice comet, while in the system of this particularly unimpressive red dwarf star the only thing in particular of note was a pair of dimples in space time left over from the Big Bang that served as doorways to other parts of the universe. However, these dimples did not lead anywhere particularly interesting either, so local sentient organisms had only bothered to place a small listening post there, along with a linear accelerator to move about mass between the wormholes to keep them stable.

In short, the place where the _Stiletto _decided to bend the laws of physics over a table and violate in multiple orifices simultaneously was rather unprepared for the abrupt arrival of the warship and the Colonial Fleet that accompanied it.

Their flames dimming slightly as the shock of arrival in this new, lower energy reality took a toll on both Rong-Arya and Ichiro-Faust but they both quickly recovered despite the discomfort and the captain immediately snapped to attention. "Begin a full sweep of this system. We want to know if anything is alive out there."

"Aye-aye ma'am," Xavier reported as he set the ships' sensors to work. Already powerful radar, microwave scans, and lidar sweeps were pulsing out at the speed of light, probing at the surrounding bubble of reality, but rushing ahead of them were psychic signals that danced along the substructure of reality, foreign things that did not belong, but _had _to belong because the crew of the _Stiletto _proved their existence.

"_Galactica _is also performing sensor sweeps. Getting superluminal feeds in now… huh… that's unlucky," Xavier noted unhappily.

"There's someone here," Rong-Arya replied in annoyance. Space was _supposed _to be huge, and yet three times in a row when they had dropped into a new universe the locals had been in system.

"Looks like a listening post and a pair of cosmic formed wormholes. Nothing major, but in about two minutes our light cone will reach them, and we're radiating pretty brightly. They would have to be blind to miss us," Xavier replied.

Tzintchi was fucking with them… _somehow._ Somehow the bastard was sitting on his throne back on Earth, fingers bridged under such that his mouth was concealed, and he was cackling while proclaiming, "Just as planned."

Of course, as Mislaato proved, just because someone was fucking with you didn't mean you couldn't enjoy it.

"How long until our next jump?" Rong-Arya asked.

"It will take the S2 and S3 engines approximately two weeks at current output to build up sufficient fuel reserves to perform an interdimensional jump. We are already preparing for all possible scenarios," Ichiro-Faust reported.

"Including the one where a giant space eel composed of the residue of the universe slithering back through time arrives and attempts to mate with the local star, triggering a sudden outgrowth of petunias on the engine manifold?" Rong-Arya asked sarcastically.

There was silence for a moment before Ichiro-Faust asked, "Do you really think it necessary to bring up Scenario HH-Alpha-3Z?"

"Yes! Because we're Chaos and shit like this is _always _happening to us, and as a follower of Tzintchi, I, as in Rong Xun, believe that if something completely random like that shows up to bite you in the ass then you had it coming for not having the a dozen or two contingency plans in place necessary to turn things to your favour," Rong-Arya declared.

"Do we need to include the…" Ichiro-Faust began.

"_Yes! _We _do!_ Sorry, but Arya is kind of groggy in this universe since as a Daemon Prince he kind of sucks up a lot of energy, so I'm feeling a bit bitchy, okay?" Rong replied.

"Yes ma'am. Of course ma'am," Ichiro-Faust replied.

Sighing, Rong rubbed her forehead and said, "First contact… _again_. Ugh. O'Hare, please inform the Colonials of our discovery. And would one of the Mislaato fucks out there get me some aspirin? Two weeks in this place… I hope we can shoot something."

"Battle would deplete our reserves and thus prolong our stay ma'am," Ichiro-Faust pointed out.

Raising an eyebrow in annoyance, Rong did not have to say another word before the other daemonhost shut up.

* * *

In the wisdom of the Praxis, the Shaa had not equipped the surveillance posts with particularly sophisticated sensor packages, seeing them as a waste for stations designed to simply monitor traffic in and out of the wormholes and guarantee their stability. As such, they actually missed the unnatural light show that heralded the arrival of the _Stiletto _and her charges.

They did not however miss the sudden high powered scans that began to bounce off their sensor arrays, announcing the arrival of the something with potent electromagnetic sensors into their system.

"What in the name of the Shaa is going on down here?" Lieutenant Ferdinand demanded as he floated into the now absolutely chaotic main command chamber.

"Sir, unknown contacts just… _appeared_," Luuka, the Lai-own NCO on duty reported crisply. "Triangulating now with the opposite outpost, but they appear to be a cluster of ships in orbit between the star's second and third debris rings, somewhere between two and three light minutes distant. Current vector relationship states that… they should have passed within three light seconds of us two months ago."

"That's impossible," Ferdinand noted angrily.

"Rerunning calculations. Same result. Running diagnostic program. No errors detected. Rerunning calculations. Sir, I cannot account for these readings," Luuka replied, raising her throat to her superior officer for punishment if necessary.

Looking over the displayed calculations, Ferdinand frowned and replied, "I see no error in your work. Gather more data and account for them."

"By the Praxis sir," Luuka replied before her avian face contorted in a way that Terrans could only understand as displeasure after long contact with a Lai-own. "Sir, emissions from the most powerfully emitting contact have dropped off and assumed a structured pattern, a reading of prime numbers along with a repeating sequence."

"Decipher what you can," Ferdinand ordered. "Meanwhile, we must inform the rest of the Empire. Emil, prepare a data burst to go through the wormhole, detailing what we know and requesting further instruction."

The Terran communication NCO nodded and immediately began compiling the appropriate message.

A few minutes later Luuka squawked slightly and said, "Sir, secondary pattern has been deciphered; it is a set of instructions for interpreting binary digital logic using the prime numbers as a starting point, followed by what appears to be a communication codec using said logic."

There was silence for a time before Ferdinand asked, "Are you trying to tell me that the unknowns just sent us _basic comm. information?_"

"Yes sir. The logic is basic and I see no reason why it should be transmitted, but the codec is… strange. It follows no computer science theorems approved by the Praxis for use in communications, but it is conceptually sound," Luuka reported.

"Can we implement it?" Ferdinand asked.

"I would advise caution, but if we create the codec on an isolated drive we should be able to get it working within an hour. The program is simple enough," Luuka replied.

Ferdinand glanced over at Emil who said, "All relevant information has been added to the message, response time should be within a day."

Nodding, Ferdinand said, "Emil, Luuka, I want you two to isolate a drive and have us ready to talk with them as quickly as possible. The Praxis states that everything that can be known is already known, so I want us to live up to that lofty ideal. Meanwhile, begin counter-broadcasting prime numbers."

An hour later and Ferdinand had a small drive loaded with the apparently alien codec and connected to one of their secondary communication arrays, the entire system isolated from the rest of the computers physically. By that time the data packet had changed to a different set, obviously something meant to be run by the codec. Plugging the new data into the isolated drive, they all watched as it was interpreted.

"The contents are audio data, unknown language sir," Emil stated.

"Play it," Ferdinand ordered, which caused a strange voice to play over the speakers.

"Sounds vaguely like one of the ancient Terran languages," Ferdinand, who as a Peer had a classical education in the history of the Empire and its conquests, noted idly. "Conjecture?"

"Phonemes groups are simple and repetitive, they are probably attempting to get us to reply in turn so as to begin learning our language," Emil guessed.

"My colleague's assessment seems reasonable if we are dealing with a first contact scenario," Luuka replied. "Although why they do not continue to use computer communication I do not know."

"Very well. Broadcast a message to the mystery ship and set it to repeat. 'This is Outpost 7-53-2 of the Praxis; we demand you identify yourselves and your purpose in our territory'," Ferdinand ordered, to which his subordinates immediately complied.

Only after the message was sent did Emil ask, "Sir, do you think that message was too complex for them?"

"Perhaps, but the Praxis demands nothing less from a Peer," Ferdinand stated.

Five minutes later the signal changed to a burst code. This time however when it was played it said in perfectly understandable speech, "Greetings Outpost 7-53-2 of the Praxis, this is Captain Rong-Arya of the Chaos frigate _Stiletto_, also representing the Colonial Remnant Fleet as they are under our protection. We intend you no harm as we are simply recharging our faster than light drives before moving on, but any and all aggression on your part will be met with full and overwhelming might."

There was a long moment of silence before Ferdinand shouted out, "_What?_"

* * *

Author's note: Just so you know, I'm much busier than I was in previous months and thus things take longer, and also I intentional keep the story on behind so I have some opportunity to catch mistakes, although this time it completely slipped my mind to go back and do the edit with suggestions. Thus, even though I might already have a chapter ready, it could take you a week or two to get it here because I might be doing things elsewhere.


	47. Training

**Chapter Forty-six: Training**

Maria Godwin stood at rigid attention in the rows of fresh, raw recruits to the 73rd Armed Forces Training Schedule, Athens. Three times a year since fully consolidating their rule, the gods had declared they would hold training for all of those who volunteered in one of four locations scattered around the globe: Tokyo, Athens, Moscow, and West Point. These locations were only for regulars, the militias were all trained locally, as was the initial screening physical exams for recruits.

Maria had been hoping for placement in Tokyo so as to be closer to the gods and because officers usually received training in Tokyo, but apparently she had done something wrong during her examinations and interviews as she had been shipped to Athens, which had so far had very little reputation. West Point was the secondary officer training point along with the primary facility for the more technically minded non-commissioned troops, and Moscow was the biggest training facility and secondary feeder for the Space Marines training in Siberia, but Athens was the least respected base thus far.

Still, Maria would serve faithful and true no matter what the gods decided was best for her. So here she stood in the blazing Aegean sun, wearing only a set of military issue panties and nothing else, including hair as she had been shaved completely bald all over before been marched out here. She thought she smelled the soles of her bare feet cooking on the tarmac. She did not however comment and neither did the hundred or so others gathered in nice neat rows around her. Everyone assembled looked as deadly serious as her.

Well, except for two notable points. The first was that a girl a row ahead of her and to the right was fidgeting ever so slightly, obviously not used to the heat and trying not to show it. Maria wasn't used to heat like this either though and she refused to show it, and neither did anyone else here.

The other slight aberration from stillness had to relate to the girl immediately to Maria's left. While the girl herself was not the problem, it was the reaction in others. In the assembled lines men and women were in about equal number, and all wearing just boxers or panties, and despite the fact that everyone assembled here were about eighteen or nineteen, the men had shown considerable restraint… right up until the little girl -petite woman really- had walked in. So far no one was acknowledging anything, but even Maria had to admit that she was turned on a little.

It was the scars. It looked like she had gone toe-to-toe with a tiger that had ripped out her entire abdomen and she had somehow come out alive at the end. In current Earth culture, body scars were highly desirable and sexy. They said that a person was a survivor. And from the stern look on the woman's face, she was clearly a survivor. In fact, looking at her the question of whether or not whatever had given her that scar had survived the encounter was a tough call to make.

Although now that Maria thought of it, she noticed that there were very few identifying marks on those around her. She saw the occasional scar from an accident or fighting, but there was nothing intentional like patterned burns or cuts or tattoos or piercings. The only brands visible were the simple star and eye pattern used to designate trained psykers. Otherwise everyone was whole of body.

Strange.

Maria then felt a curious electric tingle pass over her for a second before she noticed a slight distortion begin to emerge at the viewing stand where stern faced officers waited, although none of them appeared ready to give any sort of speech. For a few seconds a sort of ethereal mist leaked out of the distortion before it began to coalesce into a humanoid figure. As the distortion faded the mist condensed and darkened until the image of a lady draped in thin gauze began to emerge.

They had sent out a daemon to speak to them? Maria had never heard of such a thing. Were they in trouble? Or was this some sort of special honour?

And then the face finished forming and Maria had to restrain the urge to gasp in shock, a sentiment clearly expressed by everyone else. The fidgety girl clearly had the most overt reaction and had to bite her tongue to avoid saying something.

It was Daemon Princess Hikari, Beloved of the Gods, Wife of Primarch Toji, Queen of Justice. It was under her stern, unwavering, caring eye that she ensured that none of the laws of the gods were broken, and she brought down swift and terrible retribution upon everyone who dared defy their orders, sometimes personally but usually through the Ministry of Justice she oversaw.

Many an embezzler who thought they could skim a little off a government project and get away with it discovered that Hikari did not forgive and did not forget that sort of thing.

Why was the greatest of all the daemons here?

Gazing out over the assembled crowd, Hikari put on a beaming, ten thousand watt smile that framed her mature, thirty-something face perfectly. Hikari was the reason pig tails remained fashionable into middle age for women. Of course implicit in that smile was that the spotlight could also be focused into fine point capable of causing spontaneous combustion.

"Greetings recruits," she said in warm, motherly voice. "I suppose you are wondering why you are here, or more likely, why _I_ am here. Well, I am here today to tell you all that you have been selected for a special training program we have instituted at the behest of the gods themselves that shall be a joint venture between the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Justice. Normally our non-marine Special Forces operatives are taken from the cream of the crop of the various departments of the armed forces after a few years of duty. However, we have decided to start up a more specialized program, one that can cover a wide variety of roles while having no specific attachment to any originating branch. The training will also be highly specialized from day one, so we can sculpt you perfectly to the task at hand."

Hikari smiled enigmatically for a moment before she said, "I would like to congratulate you all on making it to the first day of class for the 1st Session of Assassin Corp training. Not all of you will pass, and in fact most of you won't. We expect one in ten of you to make it through the process, but those of you that fail will not fail out completely but be sent back to regular training where you will surely have careers in the Special Forces. Those of you that pass the _four year course_ will become death incarnate, modified in mind and body to be able to kill or capture anything we set you against. On Earth, you will serve the Ministry of Justice in hunting down our most elusive targets, while beyond you shall be our scouts, for while you shall know and embrace death, your skills will be useful elsewhere too."

Maria felt her heart leap at this proposal, but she, like no one else in the assembly said anything, even if there was a definite air of anticipation in the crowd.

Seeing the anticipation and silence, Hikari continued, "You have been selected for top physical and mental score results along with a high degree of loyalty and no significant body alterations. With time you will be given cybernetic enhancements. With time you will be given nannite colonies. With time you will be trained in the use of potent combat drugs. With time you will be given mutations and other gifts by the gods. _With time_. For now though you are clay and you will push yourselves to the peaks of what mortals can achieve without assistance. Incidentally, for those of you with psychic powers, outside of specialized training for you, getting caught will result in an automatic failure."

One of the men branded with the seal of a psyker gave a slight cough which caused Hikari to direct an eyebrow in his direction. Returning the look until she nodded her head, he asked, "Ma'am, judging by the fact that this is Greece, what value of 'caught' are you applying, ma'am?"

Smirking dangerously, Hikari said, "I see you know your history. Yes, if you can get away with cheating, you can prosper, for a time. Then again, there will be daemons watching… including me. And despite my continued friendship with Tzintchi, I firmly believe that cheaters never prosper."

There was a general nervous gulp from all of the psykers present.

"Smart batch we have here," Hikari noted.

Gliding back slightly, Hikari gestured for one of the officers to come forward. Nodding, one of the men stepped up to the pulpit and said, "Greetings recruits I am Captain Lawrence, and we are going to begin today by dropping the bottom ten percent of you by a simple endurance test. There are currently a hundred and twenty of you, so the first twelve to drop today are out of the training. Today will be the most gruelling part of your training as the failure rate should drop precipitously, but don't think just because you get by today we will go easy on you.

"The endurance test is as follows: there is a bay five kilometres from here, and two kilometres out in that bay is a small island with some abandoned pre-Second Impact buildings, which will be used as an obstacle course. The first part of the test is thus to _reach _the island, by any means necessary. Of course, to make things interesting, twenty minutes after the start of the exam a Whip of Mislaato will be asked to… is this word right?" Captain Lawrence asked, turning to Hikari while holding up a set of papers.

"Befriend is the correct term," Hikari confirmed. This surprisingly caused the petite woman next to Maria to snort derisively.

"Yes… well, if any of you are not in the water by the time the Whip catches up you will be 'befriended'. Thirty minutes after the beginning of the exam the gunboats will come out to encourage anyone still in the water to get to the island. After that, the test will consist of laps around the island until a sufficient number of you drop from exhaustion that the test will end. Bearers of Reigle will be used to ensure that you keep moving and that your endurance ends before theirs does. Any questions?" The captain asked.

There was a long silence before he nodded and pulled out starting gun that he pointed into the air. "Then you had all better get going!" He then pulled the trigger and everyone assembled rushed off.

Bare feet painfully blistered from standing on hot asphalt, Maria managed to ignore the pain that shot up her legs every time the sole of her foot made contact with the ground as she joined the middle of the pack as they followed the road conveniently marked off for them that led away from the heart of the training base on the outskirts of Athens.

Running five kilometres in less than twenty minutes had been physically possible for humans for decades, but having to conserve energy for a two kilometre swim and then an obstacle course in an urban environment put some constraints on things. For a time though all Maria could think about was her own breathing and the slap of flesh on hot asphalt all around her.

Then, just as their first object came in to sight, a large purple flare went up into the sky, its light not particularly noticed amongst the noonday glare, but the signal was pretty clear. Twenty minutes was up. A Space Marine could run at sixty kilometres an hour. Whips of Mislaato were faster than that. That gave them five minutes to get into the water. Some of the frontrunners, the ones who had pushed themselves during the initial leg of the course, had already made it down the long path into the water, while others were starting to climb down the closer cliffs.

Maria watched as the petite girl peeled off from the main group and went to one of the cliffs and paused for a moment, looking out over it. It wasn't a good climbing spot, the stone having been eroded such that it was a negative incline. Seeing this, the fidgety girl also broke off from the pack, and realizing what this meant, Maria too followed.

Maria did not slow down, not after she saw how the petite woman started running as well once she had enough of a head start. Others were following now, but Maria would not fail. The fidgety girl, then the petite one, then Maria all leapt off the edge of the cliff, their legs still kicking as they flew out over the rock and were suspended in air for a moment above the azure blue waters of the relatively shallow bay.

It was a long fall, but all of them were experienced athletes and pulled into smooth dives that reduced the impact from bone shattering to just like getting hit by an economy car at low speeds. Emerging from the water, Maria looked over at the petite girl and said, "You're nuts," before she started swimming for the island as other bodies began to rain down around them.

The girl shrugged and said, "You followed."

The pain in her feet did not go away, for while she was now in cool waters, Maria was also in salt water which stung what had to be open wounds on her feet. She ignored the pain however and continued to swim.

Time slipped away again as Maria focused on just swimming, but somewhere along the line she started to notice the stream of swears the fidgety girl was kicking up as she swam. Pausing for a moment, Maria asked, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" The girl announced angrily. "I tore up my feet pretty bad on the run and they hurt like motherfuckers right now."

"I did too but we need to keep swimming, and you're just wasting your breath, now come on and just swim," Maria stated before returning to swimming.

"Why do you care?" The girl asked as she too started to swim again.

"The glory of the gods demands nothing less than we give our all, and I would not see you squander this opportunity by jabbering," Maria stated grimly.

The girl quit her swearing but her breathing seemed to take on an air of grumbling after that, but focused on her own swimming, Maria barely noticed.

The 'encouragement' phase of the swimming leg was heralded by a six inch naval shell landing in the bay just far enough to the streams of swimmers to not hurt them but close enough to scare the crap out of them.

"I do believe the gunboats they were talking about were pre-Ascension destroyers," someone commented wryly in the cluster around Maria.

Pausing for a moment to consider the situation, Maria noted that the little daredevil was doing the same and she commented, "Gunships, lovely."

Maria peered at the trio of destroyers on the horizon and noted that yes, there were shapes raising off of them that were probably vectored thrust Sea King-IIs, which would probably be armed with mini-guns in their role of infantry harassment.

"Don't worry, they'll have to work to not hit us, they're just a reminder to keep going," the fidgety girl said as she swam past.

"That's not encouraging," the daredevil noted as she started to swim.

"The gods will provide," Maria replied.

"Gods will provide my ass," the fidgety girl retorted.

A minute or so later, with more naval shells raining down in a precise pattern that harmed absolutely no one, the gunships arrived, their submarine hunting gear replaced with enormous loudspeakers so that the pilots could taunt them while tracking lines of bullets up and down and across their paths.

Still, despite the fact that few of swimmers stopped and indicated that they had had enough, Maria kept going, resolutely putting one arm in front of the other and continuing to kick her feet despite the fire of exhaustion and salt on bleeding wounds that tried to stop her.

Eventually though the waves started to carry her in to the island, which was an industrial wasteland of decaying buildings over forty years old. Also, all of the beaches and climbable cliffs were blockaded by army regulars and daemons circled about preventing other modes of access. Already those who reached the island were being rounded up.

Reaching a tiny beach of the island, Maria managed to get her feet on something solid and almost immediately wished she hadn't. The rocks beneath her feet were fairly recent and were thus not smooth sand but rather sharp, which combined with the damage already done, caused her to nearly collapse. It was obvious that pretty much everyone who had made it this far was suffering from severely damaged feet as all of those rounded up so far had thick bandages around on them.

Refusing to give up this close, Maria surged onward until she noticed the daredevil looking back. Turning, Maria saw that the fidgety girl was floundering. The daredevil looked at Maria and said, "We don't leave people behind on missions."

Nodding, Maria turned around and half-waded, half-swam back to where the girl was obviously finding it impossible to set her feet down. Looking at the two coming out to help her, she said half-mournfully, half-angrily, "They're never going to let me live this one down."

Taking the right side while the other girl took the left, Maria hauled the girl on to the beach, dragging her along while she practically crawled until Hikari settled in front of them.

"Too hard this year?" Hikari asked, confusing both Maria and the daredevil, but making the girl between them laugh.

"_They _all did it," she noted, gesturing to all of those on the island before she winced and said, "I forgot how much a limiting factor pain could be though. Never been this sadistic before."

Nodding, Hikari said, "Hey, you're the one who agreed to this all those years ago."

"Only because we got to see him squirm first," the girl replied as she looked at her bloody and ragged feet before noting quietly, "Do you think this counts as 'blood for the blood god'?"

"Can you sacrifice to yourself?" Hikari asked.

"Not really," Asukhon noted as she shed the mortal form she wore this year, sighing in relief as all of the mortal pains she had been bearing slipped away. This of course left everyone not in on the deal staring at one of the four gods in absolute shock.

Getting up on cloven feet of iron, Asukhon stretched out her limbs and shook out her newly re-grown hair before looking about at everyone and saying, "Hey guys, it's me, your Blood Goddess, Patron Deity of Kicking Ass and Taking Names. Sorry about the bit of deception, it's just that Tzintchi pointed out that we need to stay grounded, so every couple of years we spend a day or two mortal to remind ourselves what it's like. And let me say, what a pain in my ass. Get Mislaato down here with the painkillers, stat! These people all deserve something for being awesome, especially these two," Asukhon then pointed at Maria and the daredevil girl.

Maria at that point fainted from religious ecstasy. She had talked to, no touched, no she had _helped _one of the gods and was being singled out for praise. It was too much.

Hikari sighed and said, "I told you that you should have waited another half an hour before taking divine form again, it makes my job so much easier."

Shrugging, Asukhon noted, "Hey, I spent twenty-four hours in a mortal body devised by the others without using any powers and did you _see _what that run did to my feet? Not on your life was I staying one moment longer girlfriend."

"That attitude kind of ruins the point of these exercises you know?" Hikari said while medical staff looked over the fainted Maria.

"Hey, I've got a _fuck load _more respect for these hard asses now. It's Reigle's thing to keep going, I'm all about getting the job down quick and messy," Asukhon said with a smirk.


	48. Graduation

**Chapter Forty-seven: Graduation**

Maria stared at herself in the mirror, at the face she saw in the reflective surface. Had four years truly gone by since the day she had met one of the gods? Had four, bloody, painful, exhausting years truly gone by? Years of endless, repetitive drills on building endurance, stealth and avoidance skills, social skills, combat skills… just about every kind of skill a human could learn really.

They had been tortured endlessly for days, just to see how long it would take for them to break, and they always did break. Then they would be built back up, mentally and physically, into something stronger than before. They had been run literally into the ground with training, then picked up and rebuilt once more. Again and again, they had been tested to fracture in every possible dimension before they were reinforced. New training, gifts from the gods, cybernetics, combat drugs… the list went on and on.

One hundred twenty human young adults had entered into the program. Thirty-seven had died in training accidents caused by over-estimation of their abilities, usually an overestimation of the ability to jump or dodge fire they really should have stayed in cover from. Maria herself had her heart restarted four times, not counting surgical procedures or during interrogation sessions. And now, at the end of it all, twelve assassins remained.

Calling them 'human' was probably over generous.

Still, when Maria looked at her face in the mirror, she looked just as innocent and unscarred as the day she had entered into the training. The innocent part was just a carefully cultivated mask however, while the unblemished visage had to do with the fact that assassins with distinctive features were not as useful as ones that could blend into a crowd immediately after a hit.

She still remembered her first killing. A year into the training she had been taken to a hospice. Reigle had removed disease from those who did not follow her, but the gods did not have the powers to stop the effects of aging or of critical injuries. Thus there were still places where people went to die. And sometimes they wished the process expedited somewhat.

So all of the assassins had been given a room where a person waiting for euthanasia waited inside and a variety of tools to accomplish the job. Of course, every assassin had to ensure that the target was dead, so if you chose poisons or other quiet methods you had to sit and watch the target slowly pass away. Maria still remembered the smile on the old woman's face- that hundred plus year old face- as she pushed the barrel of the gun between her eyes and pulled the trigger.

Her first victim had been willing and had gladly joined with the gods afterward, but every assassin was expected to kill someone face to face, so see the light in their eyes die away. That first mission in the hospice had been to sort out those who could perform the fact… and also who performed it properly, with the sort of emotionless detachment that would keep them from doing something stupid later on.

There had been later missions, ones involving less willing targets. Despite the nearly anarchic law set of the gods, there were still those that insisted on breaking the rules. Not just little ones like bylaws or taxes or even universal conscription, but the big ones. There was still trafficking in humans, drugs that even Mislaato had agreed were more harmful than fun, and a variety of social ills that the gods disagreed with. Oh, sure, they occasionally skirted some of the lines themselves, maybe even stepped over every once in a while, but there were a few points that they refused to compromise on.

Disembowelling the leader of a child smuggling ring had been one of the crowning moments in Maria's life. To see the terror in his face as his soul left his body, knowing what lay on the other side for him, had been like the sweetest of wines. To purge the world of scum like him made all the pain and misery and tears worth it for Maria.

The look of betrayal on his face when he realized that his trusted lieutenant was in fact an infiltrator had been a cherry on top though. The original second-in-command had been replaced days before the op, but only Maria, her team, and her superiors knew that.

The fact that her face remained unblemished also had to do with the fact that she had a polymorphine gland in her body along with the blessings of the shape shifting Tzintchi. She had a thousand faces. When it came to infiltration through camouflage and social interaction, Maria had top marks.

So wrapped up in internal dialogue was she that only noticed the least stealthy member of her team, or coven as the lingo went, when she felt small arms wrap around her and naked breasts press up against her own bare back.

"Are you going to stare into that thing all day?" A long familiar voice asked.

Placing her hands on those about her stomach, Maria asked, "The boys getting antsy without us?"

"You know it. They love to watch us play together, but leave them alone and they just stare awkwardly at each other," she said.

"Oh, don't tease them like that Vita," Maria said playfully.

An assassin's coven was a strange outgrowth of their construction. Apex level assassins like them could not relate to anyone other than other assassins, and to keep them all sane their handlers had discovered that integrating them into teams worked very well not only in increasing their lethality but keeping them healthy. Each coven was as good as a marriage, stronger in fact when you considered that they would probably all receive ascension to daemonhood after death. There were no secrets between them.

Such as the fact that Vita was from another universe, another branch of the multiverse really, and the reason she had joined the military was because she refused to stay still. She had another family out there, waiting for her, and after spending five years technically as a POW but really more of a civilian with a government pension for living expenses, she had decided that something had to be done. She was going to find her original family, one way or another, and show them her _new_ family.

So she had found a legal advisor, relinquished her previous citizenship, something she had no real attachment to as she only owed her loyalty to her 'mistress' Hayate, and signed up as a citizen of this world. Something that meant that she had to sign up for military service. Of course, as a former NCO in a training academy and an experienced warrior and soldier, she excelled at her initial examinations and been bumped up to the assassin trials.

She had access to a strange sort of sorcery that originated from another set of physics, but here abilities were primarily combat-oriented, making her unsuited to the sort of psychic powers that typified other sorcerers. She did however earn her code name as 'The Scarlet Hammer' in the coven with her skills. Where Maria would infiltrate and then eliminate the enemy before disappearing again, earning the code 'Holy Ghost', Vita had a slightly different tack. Her method of assassination was to use her petite body size to get close to an unsuspecting target and then unleash horrific violence upon them and any allies within the lethal radius before slinking away again.

The two of them worked well together, as they had somewhat similar styles of 'get close then kill', so on group missions they were the closest. Of course, that meant that it had hurt the most when as part of their training each member of the team had been isolated and lead quite strongly to believe that the others had been killed quite horrifically. Psychic probe teams lead by daemon princes could pull quite the number on the mind.

Then again, the members of the coven were the only ones who could relate after being subjected to a week long session with a Slaaneshi greater daemon. Not one of Mislaato's lot, but the actual psychopathic, predatory train wreck of a monster that had hitched a ride along so many years ago to assist in the ascension of the gods. _That _had not been fun. Of course, when it was revealed that everyone was in fact still alive and not decorating the torturer's racks, that had been the greatest, most relieving moment in all their lives.

Interrupting her reverie once again, Vita said while nibbling on the back of Maria's neck right where she liked it, "But it's so _easy _to mock them. Why is it that the girls do all the hard work while they get to stay behind?"

"Because neither one of us are physical capable of using someone as a mind puppet, and you must admit that what Jose does with a rifle is art. Do you remember what he did to those brain rot smugglers?" Maria pointed out.

"You mean where he put a round between the eyes of that one guy with poor trigger safety and someone managed to have the bullet spray from the death spasms break the locking mechanism on a crane, thus dropping a cargo container full of volatile drugs on the advancing forces right before we were about to be overrun? Yeah, I'll admit that was art," Vita conceded.

Leaning into the ministrations of her coven-mate, Maria said, "Or what about the time Charles rushed those arms smugglers bare assed to haul you out of range of those lascannons that had you pinned down?"

Maria could feel Vita lean in to her back and smirk, saying, "I couldn't walk straight for a week after that I was so grateful. Still, they're fun to tease."

"I know. You're the hammer of our group Vita, the blunt one. I'm the deep, moody thinker who has to put on the masks, become the social butterfly and interact with the worst people in the world, the ones who think Chaos is to strict on their way of life. Half the time you just tie off her little tits, put on a jumper, and then bite the dick off the first pedophile you lure in," Maria noted.

"Hey! My missions are much more sophisticated than that! Most child abusers and sexual predators target only those they trust and feel safe around. I go undercover in schools and orphanages. And you know how much I hate those missions anyway. I can't get off for a week afterward because I feel guilty for my partners sleeping with me," Vita complained.

"I know, I know. We all have our issues. I get the deep infiltration stuff, you get all the sexual predators, Jose has to deal with the simultaneous distance he operates at while still knowing the faces of his targets intimately, and Charles, Charles rapes people's minds and takes over their bodies. They had to replace his heart with an artificial one because every time one of his puppets dies his original heart stopped beating and had to be restarted. We're all screwed up," Maria replied.

"Yeah, but when you smash in a man's ribcage and you know that he got off on tying up little kids in his basement, it's the greatest thing in the world to watch that flicker of fire in his eyes die, and to know that the last thing going through his mind before he meets final judgement is the sense of shock and betrayal that his 'helpless victim' turned out to be an assassin. Then you get to untie all of the kids and be the hero for a few brief seconds before slipping away in the mayhem as the regular fuzz arrive. Those are the times that make it all worth it," Vita said.

Maria smiled before she turned around, picked up a rather surprised Vita, and said, "Alright, that's it, you've just convinced me. Instead of moping around, we're going to go have fun, get clean, and then go to our graduation ceremony."

* * *

The four members of their coven stood proudly at order amongst the proud members of the surviving first class of assassins, decked out in their full gear. Maria the Holy Ghost wore her chameleon skin suit, a nano-motile fabric capable of rearranging itself into nearly any configuration Maria could think of, although right now she had it set to a dense weave, skin tight body armour. She had on display a wide array of melee weapons, from poisoned blades to a power sword. She also had, concealed about her person, a compact hell pistol.

Next to her on the left, Vita wore her barrier jacket, blood red and liberally decorated with skulls but mostly unchanged from its original design, except for the addition of an iron collar about her neck, a gift from the gods to help regulate the flow of otherworldly energies into her body while outside of her home environment. She had not soaked up nearly so much Warp energy as the only other mage from her home dimensions to require more drastic measures. Attached to her collar was her device in its dormant state, appearing so innocently as a little pendant.

To Maria's right was Jose the Artful Scalpel, the coven's sniper, and he too wore a chameleon skin suit, although his did not have quite the same configurability as hers but had a better protective rating. His eyes had been replaced years ago by low profile cybernetics, but since he did not want to go incognito he did not have the camouflage turned on so they were silver and gold orbs of metal. Also, invisibly, he had a 'third eye', a sort of psychic insight that surpassed all of the others when it came to combat precognition. Standing on the ground next to him was his baby, the two metre long Finale rifle. While often too conspicuous for standard work, the enormous laser weapon did have its uses in ultra-long range anti-personnel work and in a pinch as an anti-tank weapon.

Then to Vita's left was Charles the Waking Nightmare, pale and resplendent in his robes. He looked the like the least likely candidate for an assassin as an albino African, something that most people would probably remember, but he rarely got himself into a position where he was seen. He was the group's psyker, an extremely powerful telepath and telekinetic who had specialized in forcibly taking over other's bodies. He needed no weapons, for his body was a living weapon, and he tended to borrow the items of his foes. Still, a truer friend and a more incorrigible prankster could not be found.

So the four of them waited, proud amongst the elite of the elite. Naked, any one of them could give a Space Marine a hard time. Properly armed and prepared… their enemies often never knew what happened to them.

They waited patiently as Hikari manifested. Clearing her throat for effect, she said, "I'm impressed to see so many of you still here today, four years after you began. Honestly, we weren't sure if we could get one quality assassin out of this program, but it seems that our initial estimates were wrong, and that 10% of you actually did pass. Out of hundreds of thousands of possible candidates and a starting cohort of a hundred-twenty, twelve of you have made it here today. Twelve of you have _survived _to today, as our training showed the frailty of the human body in comparison to the human spirit. To those in the military who know only of whispers of your presence, you send chills up their spines to think that we have produced something so perfectly lethal yet still human.

"To those who know you more intimately… well, we're not sure just what to make of you really. You have consistently surprised us. After the second year, all losses were caused by trainees pushing their bodies beyond their limits and suffering the fatal consequences. We honestly tried to break you permanently, to do things to you that we thought no one could withstand, and yet you consistently pulled together the pieces and spat in the face of our expectations. We could not defeat you; we could only kill you, something we had no interest in. So here you stand, the greatest humanity has to offer, and the gods are impressed," Hikari said before nodding to an officer carrying a case.

"You have all graduated, that is a foregone conclusion at this point, and you all may now carry, for the first time, the titles of Divine Assassin, a rank unique to you and conferring the privileges of a colonel in the army. You answer only to your handlers, who in turn answer only to the Gods themselves. While we are here though, I would like to announce something of interest," Hikari explained to them before idly opening the case and pulling out what was inside.

It was a sword, a strange weapon of a matte grey material that seemed to shift in and out of reality at times, morphing and fluid. Smiling, Hikari explained, "In the old ways, the Imperium outfitted some of its assassins with fearsome blades known as phase swords, weapons derived from alien technology. Specifically the C'tan, the creatures we seek to overthrow. We however have learned that the C'tan themselves derived phase technology from observations of their wars with the Angels. Knowing these facts, we have managed to miniaturize the Lance of Longinus. This is currently the only copy of the one melee weapon more fearsome than a daemon blade in our arsenal. This is an Angel Cutter. In the whole multiverse, there are few weapons this deadly. We present this morphing blade to an assassin using polymorphine and who has demonstrated the best use of that shape changing chemical. Would Maria Godwin please step forward?"

Four years ago Maria had fainted away at the praise of one of the avatars of the gods. Now she confidently stepped forward to the stage, exchanging her power sword for the phase weapon.

Returning to the line with a grin, Maria waited expectantly. Hikari paused for a long period before she said, "I give up; I can see you are all too well trained to not anticipate one last thing. We have one final task for you as students. The gods wish to send their avatars to a public meeting in another universe. Your task is thus to provide security detail for them at an Iron Maiden concert."

"Which era?" Charles asked.

"It's up to the security detail to figure that out, but the gods do demand that we get some daemons summoned in during either 'Number of the Beast' or 'Dance of Death'," Hikari replied, the grin rapidly growing on her face.

The assassins all looked at each other for a moment before they all nodded sagely. They knew how to pull this off.


	49. In Concert

**Chapter Forty-eight: In Concert**

The book sat in his hands with the familiarity of a slow growing tumour. It shouldn't have been there, but it had always been there in a way, and if he excised it, he would rub at the spot wondering where it had gone. It was a question wrapped in an answer. It was the sort of history that none of his comrades could provide. It was the sort of insight only an outsider could provide. It was ghastly to read.

And it rang of the truth.

It was why they had gone to Canada and avoided the shockwave of a massive explosion several universes away that caused the whole world, but especially Japan, to light up with spectacular auroras. It was why he had accepted their help to avoid Haruhi's imagination from sparking too radically as all of the reality warping she had already done interacted with the strange radiation from other worlds.

He had asked '_why?_' and Chaos had told him. They had told him how stories could resonate throughout the universe, how archetypes could bleed through. They had told him that they had discovered another hub universe, one that unlike with here, remained sealed off.

They had discovered the universe ruled by Azathoth; the Nuclear Chaos; the Demon Sultan. Yog-Sothoth had shut the gates to that reality to protect the multiverse from the insane slumbers of that deity. Nyarlathotep had been spawned from the dreams of the ruler of all creation in that place, a major-domo for the gods and a cruel corruptor and despoiler.

And Haruhi was the _same_. She had come into being, probably been _constructed_, untold aeons ago and then somehow been driven insane, sealed within her domain by forces beyond understanding, to dream away eternity. Only somewhere along the line she had woken up and erased existence and began to play with reality like clay. Technically until a few years ago she hadn't even been a 'she' or a human. She had simply _been_. She had experimented with forms and realities, plucking stories out of the ether and trying out the roles out of sheer, mad boredom.

This time she had decided to erase her own knowledge of what she was so she could play the role of 'Japanese schoolgirl' more fully, but even then she could not contain her infinite curiosity and wanton, casual disregard for the puppets constructed for her amusement.

And if Haruhi was Azathoth then Kyon was her Nyarlathotep, the part of her mind that had separated out in frustration but still had to keep her entertained. How many billions of iterations had they gone through? How many uncountable intelligent beings had they wiped out with each press of the reset button?

The worst bit was that the gods had presented evidence, of the sort that Yuki and her allies had confirmed. It was all here in this book, a map of the cosmic detritus left behind by the alterations made to universe. It made Kyon want to scream out, to take refuge in madness, but he hung on and kept his mouth shut. Maybe he wouldn't be able to contain Haruhi _forever_, but perhaps a lifetime or two, maybe make her see the worth of the world. Make her stick with things instead of abandoning everything for the next passing interest.

It was the only hope if Kyon wanted to contain this insane deity. Even Chaos looked all happy, fluffy bunnies in comparison to the unimaginable destruction wrought so far. At least their death toll had a number. Kyon wasn't even sure if there was a _word _for the number of lives and civilizations wiped from existence by Haruhi.

Although to be fair to her, Haruhi was really just the latest incarnation; not exactly blameless, but her personality was relatively unique and thus she might be horrified by her own past actions if she was aware of them. Unfortunately, from some of the wreckage uncovered in the space between realities the realization of that seemed to trigger a suicide event that erased the latest universe and incarnation but could not actually undo the deity behind it all.

It was the ultimate in Catch-22s. Tell Haruhi what she's done and the whole universe goes bye-bye and nothing gets solved. Don't tell her and risk her continuing what she's always done and making the universe go bye-bye. Neither was a particularly pleasant option. Especially for the one being who was sure to get dragged along for the ride, no matter what.

Then again, his allies occasionally made weird demands of him, like making sure that Haruhi stayed away from a heavy metal concert on another continent. Apparently it was all for their safety, but Kyon still wasn't sure why the request needed to be made considering that she was contained here in Japan.

Kyon then looked down at the book in his hands and the terrible truths within. No, with Haruhi, or more precisely the entity she represented, it always paid to go to that extra bit of caution.

Perhaps even some proactive steps might be necessary.

* * *

"This was really the only place we could find?" Charles asked while leaning up against a wall near the stadium where the concert would be.

Maria shrugged and said, "Too many of the main sequence universes are beyond Maiden and time travel is a pain in the ass to get right. We couldn't guarantee we would hit a point with a tour going on unless we went into the Doldrums, which are still mostly unexplored even on the edges."

"Did His Majesty Pen-Pen have to come along? This place is dangerous enough as it is," Charles griped.

"Come on Chuck, its not like this place is one time-quake away from annihilation, we'll have enough forewarning to pull out right if necessary," Jose said reassuringly.

"Yeah, well, I just get the feeling that guarding the gods is going to be a right pain in the ass," Charles said sullenly.

"You're just pissed that you can't puppet one of the band members," Vita noted.

"I believe the gods said that would be 'Extra heresy!' to do that," Maria said while smirking.

"It wouldn't be 'puppet'; it would be 'observer'!" Charles said.

"This is a light hearted assignment, let's just do it and have fun and… oh good gods, they're here," Jose said before planting his right hand over his face in embarrassment.

"MAIDEN! MAIDEN! MAIDEN!" The gods whooped in excitement while marching along with the crowds, wearing somewhat aged, adult versions of their human selves wearing the most stereotypically over the top heavy metal clothing possible.

Once she picked her jaw up off the ground, Vita griped, "I hope the bastards assigned to security detail around the Emperor Penguin are having a better time than us."

* * *

At one of the private skyboxes at the stadium in one of premium positions for the rich and powerful who wanted to see the concert but didn't want the sweaty, crowded, pot and tobacco filled air of the floor, a customer service rep found that her gift basket was stalled at the front doors of the room by some large looking men in suits, although they looked more like shaved gorillas than men.

"Our client thanks the establishment for the gift, but he does not want to be disturbed at the moment," one of the rather freakishly tall guards said before passing the gift basket on through.

Catching a peek, the woman asked, "Hey, did I see a penguin in there? Because an-"

"You saw _nothing_," the other giant replied angrily while moving to block things off her view.

"But-" the woman began.

She found herself lifted off the ground by her shirt, the guard all but yelling, "_You saw nothing!_"

Before she could wet herself in terror however the little microphone thing in his ear started to squawk… _literally. _It sounded like whatever was on the other end kept saying something like "Wark!" Eventually the guard cooled down and dropped the poor girl.

"My client would like me to apologize to you and explain that while he enjoys his privacy, he felt that I was a touch overzealous with you, and he would like to offer you fair monetary compensation for any fright you might have suffered. How does twenty thousand dollars sound?" The guard replied, and it seemed the pay would be coming out of his salary if his expression was anything to go by.

* * *

"_MOSH FOR THE MOSH GOD! PYRO FOR THE PYRO THRONE!_"

"MA'AM, IT'S REALLY HARD TO KEEP AN EYE ON YOU WHEN YOU CROWD SURF!" Maria cried out as she tried to follow Asuka across the ocean of jumping, head banging, moshing fans in front of the stage.

Just then the whole stadium went up with the final cheer of the song, "CAN I PLAY WITH MADNESS?"

As the band settled down and went into some inter-song banter, the assassins managed to round the gods back up into one place in the crowd.

"Okay, let's check in here. Misato, how high are you exactly?" Maria asked.

"I can see SR-71s beneath me," Misato said dreamily.

"Right…" Maria noted. "Asuka, you… is that a necklace of teeth?"

Asuka shrugged and said, "Mosh got crazy, what can I say? I donated a couple of my own, but they grew back."

Maria held out a hand and said, "I'll pass those along to medical. And Shinji, I don't even _want_ to know why you have a shoe collection."

"All will become clear in time," Shinji replied with a grin.

"Rei… Rei, what happened?" Maria asked, dreading the answer.

"It is advisable you not be informed until after the mission so as to not turn your stomach and thus decrease your effectiveness," Rei replied as softly as possible in the crowd as Bruce continued his story up on stage.

"Goddess of disease tells me not to ask, I'm not going to ask," Maria said with a shake of her head.

Up on stage, Bruce then said, "…and shouldn't kill that albatross, lest you end up like this fellow. It's the _Rime of the Ancient Mariner!_"

The whole crowd, including the gods, threw up their arms in glee and cheered as the most cultured and literary song on the set list started up. As the song progressed however, the whole thing took on a strange, charged, ethereal quality.

"What's going on?" Maria asked as the gods took on a more concerned look to their faces.

Then their faces split into grins and Misato said, "I think the god of this reality just got laid! Go Kyon!"

"Why is _this _happening?" Maria inquired.

"Probably our presence, don't worry though, we can evacuate everyone quickly, but we might take the stadium along with us if we try," Shinji said with a shrug before he went back to singing along to the song off key.

When the song went into its quiet, ghost ship portion, something very strange happened. Shinji felt a prick in his mind and he realized he was in psychic contact with someone.

_Who's there?_

_Sir?_

Shinji quickly switched his state of mind over to Tzintchi and dredged up the psychic voice before he asked _Lars? From the _Stiletto_? Is that you?_

_This is Lars, although I was separated from the _Stiletto _a few months back after the attack on the Borg. Umm… could you get back to me in a day or two, sir? I'm kind of in the middle of something._

_This is a freak occurrence man, I don't know if I'll be able to replicate it. You and the ship have been out of contact for nine years._

_Bugger. Okay… err, just a second sir, I have to put a bullet between the eyes of a wizard. Okay. So, I got separated and hurled across the multiverse. To make a long story short, I land in the middle of a divine Cold War and am forced to flee into the inter-universe void to protect the daughter of the leader of the dominant faction. We then land in an absolutely _lovely _medieval world and get caught up in the power struggles of a bunch of crazy elves. I also get pregnant. _Long story. _Currently I am fleeing along with a band of refugees out of a subterranean world while being chased by an army because said daughter I rescued kind of usurped the power of one of the local gods and now a rival wants to take that power. Real complicated._

_Oh. Wow. We're just at an Iron Maiden concert right now while the deity of this place is getting some action, and it's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which I guess is producing a sympathetic effect given your background._

_Nice, although right now I am more preferential to a slightly modified Red Hot Chilli Peppers song._

_Which one?_

_Running away, running away, running away now. Running away, running away, running away now._

_You're surprisingly clever for a guy under attack._

_My sarcasm has been honed to a razor sharp edge. What can I…_

The connection was lost.


	50. Cornered

**Chapter Forty-nine: Cornered**

Things had not gone well since the fall of House Baenre and the ascension of Skuld. Actually, that was a bit of an understatement, along the lines of suggesting that an ocean wasn't exactly the driest place in the world. Technically true, but it lacked a significant amount of nuance and power to the statement.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to parse what had happened in that time into a pithy statement as it had mostly been either packing to get the hell out of Dodge, or when Lolth had shown up in Menzoberranzan, it had involved a great deal of actually getting the hell out of Dodge.

Skuld still wasn't sure if Lars' decision to ask her to bless a .50 round had been the best of ideas or not, but they were still alive, so she supposed that should count for something. As they had been moving the refugee column, primarily freed slaves from House Roreril or claimed from the ruins of House Baenre as 'spoils', but a few others who just wanted to escape drow society in Menzoberranzan had followed, Lars had handed her the round and made his request.

Skuld had merely nodded and reached in to the round, finding the tiny little bit of essence that defined the bullet as a bullet and asked it to be the best damn bullet it could be, in imitation of her sister Belldandy… although Skuld highly doubted her gentle sister would ever ask a weapon to do its very best at attempting to kill or maim someone. When she had finished and opened her eyes from her concentration, Skuld discovered that the bullet was now etched with runes of absolute darkness.

Lars took the round and smiled, saying, "This should work."

He had then left for a minute before there was the loud, echoing boom of his rifle firing in an enclosed space followed by him rushing out, his face pale. He said, "Okay, I have _news_. The news in general is that I just shot Lolth. The _bad _part is that despite the fact that getting a divine blessing seems to have ensured it would _hurt_, it wasn't enough to actually kill her and thus I probably just pissed her off more than she already was. The _good _news, maybe, is that I don't think she's going to be coming after us for a while."

"Why? Where did you hit her?" Skuld had asked.

Lars winced and said, "Well… she's currently bleeding… from the breast. I was aiming for the heart but she turned at the last moment so that she got caught in the right breast just above the nipple. Just as well I suppose, I think the bullet was stopped dead by her rib cage, which is obviously tougher as a deity than I expected. But yeah, her right boob kind of exploded like… well… a milk bag caught in an industrial press. Blood and skin and fat everywhere, Lolth is currently rolling around on the ground screaming while her followers just sort of stare in shock. And you're wearing the same sort of pained expression and clutching yourself in the same way guys do when they hear about another man taking a really nasty shot to the groin."

"You shot her tits off?" Skuld cried out in sympathetic pain.

"Just _one! _And it was an accident. In any case, I think I bought us an hour or two and I probably crippled her ability to motivate the drow by publicly maiming and injuring her. I don't think she's going anywhere naked like that anymore though," Lars replied grimly.

That had been a week ago, and now the whole column was holed up in a dead end cave, every drow looking to gain Lolth's favour camped out two caves down. Despite getting cornered, they were in an excellent position to make a last stand, for the massive cave they were in was a dead magic zone and in between the cave where the refugees were camped out and the cave where the drow and their servants were camped out, there was a long gallery with a slight downward slope and a choke point from the drow cave.

A choke point where Skuld had set up a nasty little spell, one that only she and Lars understood the workings of, but that scared the crap out of the drow. It _looked _like a simple globe of darkness, but that was just a side effect of both its function and the fact that Skuld was still trying to figure out how exactly to manipulate her new found magic properly so she was stuck with shadows.

What the little sphere of darkness _did _do was any outside electromagnetic radiation was allowed in but it was not allowed back out. Air molecules significantly above the average speed of ones outside the sphere were also reflected if they tried to exit. Finally, the globe technically didn't _reflect _electromagnetic radiation; it absorbed it and re-emitted photons along one of two energy levels; either 100 milli-electron volts or 1.22 Mega-electron volts.

This was to say that Skuld had turned the interior of the globe of darkness into a combination microwave/gamma ray/positron oven with no way to lower its interior temperature. Rask had thrown a few fireballs in there on the first day and they kept a fire next to it on their side so that they would not drain all of their air out through convection and keep a minimum input of energy. Once the first unlucky enemy soldier had stepped inside the globe and thus been vaporized by all of the water in his body explosively boiling away and the organic molecules catching fire from the intense gamma ray bombardment, the globe had become a death trap.

Skuld, as the creator of the spell, knew the current contents of the globe, and as such she had advised no one to go anywhere near it as the internal pressure and temperature was quite high. Not _yet _high enough to trigger nuclear fusion, but considering that the drow had driven several hundred goblin cannon fodder slaves into the globe in a mad rush before they realized what was happening, Skuld did not want anyone under her protection to be anywhere _near _that thing when the spell failed. Already, the only way for the globe to shed heat had been to melt the granite it had been touching, but that had only lasted so long and a great deal of the energy had been returned to the globe once the stone had melted away and radiated away much of the energy.

So the drow had been trying to hop wizards across the barrier created by the globe to establish a beach head, but Lars had been camped out at the far end of the gallery with his rifle and sniping them as they came through. The drow were learning how to deal with bullets, but it was difficult for them as their leadership still demanded progress.

For her part, Skuld had been helping to manufacture fresh ammunition, reassure the terrified civilians, and most of all she had been trying to master the Shadow Weave she now controlled. It was difficult. A great amount of emotion, mostly rage and loss, had been dumped into the magical construct over the past several thousand years, and it was trying to distort Skuld's mind. It was also clearly made by someone who had a medieval mindset so it was organized in a way Skuld would have never allowed.

Oh, and she tried to rein in her daughter.

Four times during the retreat she had disappeared only to reappear, her white hair and the simple white silk dress she seemed to like to wear soaked through with blood while she used all four limbs to drag a dead drow by the throat with her teeth. It was very kitten-ish. In an utterly terrifying way the first two times, but the little daemon was very cute when she wasn't ripping things apart.

Right now she was sitting next to Skuld as she meditated on the Shadow Weave and tried to reorganize things. She was intently working on inscribing tiny runes of destruction, where she had learned them Skuld wasn't exactly sure she wanted to know, into the surface of shot that would be going into the shells destined for Lars. While the task wasn't exactly easy, the shots _were _triple-ought rounds destined for an eight gauge. Still, it was rather cute to watch her with her tongue stuck out in concentration as she made miniscule marks with a scratching tool in the soft silver metal.

They had run out of lead a few days ago and had resorted to melting down some of the precious metals from valuables people had brought with them, making the most expensive shotgun rounds ever. They had ten twelve gauge shotguns already made before the assault on the House Baenre compound, except for the ammunition, and Skuld had privately made Lars' new weapon as part of her experimentation with her new powers. She knew that she could get them all out of this situation… she just needed the time to figure out _how!_

"All done!" Gunnhild cried out triumphantly as she held up the last shell she had made for her daddy. She was really quite the industrious one; having inscribed enough shot for a dozen shells and then packed them all.

Opening her eyes from her meditation on the nature of the Shadow Weave, she smiled at the rather humorously named daemon and said, "Good girl. Here, let mommy see those."

It kind of scared Skuld just how fast she had become used to using maternal pronouns for herself, but when Gunnhild buried her face in Skuld's lap, terrified by the excess fear radiating off the refugees despite the fact that daemon could, and _had_, rip any one of them apart with her bare hands… claws… tentacles… well, there were appendages of some sort in the whirlwind of death anyway… Skuld had felt something ancient well within her. Gunnhild _was _her daughter, no matter how strangely she had been conceived and born. And Skuld would do her part in raising the little murderous psychopath into something not quite so evil.

Skuld was of course terrified of where this line of thought was leading her.

Taking the double handful of shells, Skuld let them start floating around her, whispering to the spirits within them. Already they had been enchanted by Gunnhild, each piece of shot carrying a tiny, malevolent Chaos rune. The effects on flesh would not be pretty. Scratch that, the effects on _any sort of matter_ would be disgusting. But then Skuld started whispering to them, telling the shot that each and every one of them was a god killer, imbuing them with a tiny piece of divine essence. Not much, but she was certain that anything less than a deity would not walk away from being shot by one of these shells.

Especially when once loaded into her gift for Lars. It was this world's first pump action shotgun, the others being double barrel break action breech loaders. Eight-gauge with a seven shell tube magazine, it was only something Lars with his daemonic strength could handle in combat, but it would make him an utterly lethal at medium to close range. Of course, since Skuld had crafted this personally using nothing but her mind channelled through her shadow magic and some raw ore she had discovered here, the gun itself was ridiculously enchanted. It was coloured shiny obsidian black but with tiny green flecks that resolved into alien stars and nebula if you looked at it too long.

Divinely made magical shotgun loaded with god killing Chaos 000-buckshot wielded by a daemon related to the ones who had made the weapon and its ammunition. If Skuld could make anything for Lars that might give him a fighting chance should Lolth herself decide to come through the globe of darkness, this was it.

As the shells slowly orbited about her, Skuld noticed Lars coming in to the main chamber where they had established themselves. Lars and Gunnhild were the only two the ever loyal Steb would not stop trying to get close to her. Once they got out of this, Skuld's first line of research would be to figure out how to restore the dwarf's vocal cords.

"I'm out of rounds for the .50 cal. Worse yet, there are magical sensors down there. I think they've cooked up a new idea," Lars replied.

"I think I've almost figured out how to open a portal out of here. I'm 95% certain I can open one to the Shadow Plane, and about 25% sure I can figure out how to make a direct one to the surface. I don't want to go to the Shadow Plane if we don't have to though as I'm pretty sure Shar is there and pissed off beyond belief," Skuld said.

"We may need to risk it," Lars replied. "I'm calling forth the volunteers now. We're going to be in a fight soon, I can tell."

Skuld's voice trembled for a moment before she said, "Before we go out there, could you do something for me?"

"Yes, what?" Lars asked.

"Marry me."

* * *

Lars blinked once. Lars blinked twice. He opened his mouth to say something, raising a finger as he did it, before he abandoned that action half way through. Finally he just sort of spluttered, "What?"

Pulling Gunnhild close and hugging her, Skuld said, "Gunnhild is my child as much as yours, even if the circumstances are like no other conception ever in that it was honestly a mistake and an accident on both our parts. But I still love her, even if she is trying to build me a skull throne."

"It'll be huge momma, thousands of skulls for you lounge on," Gunnhild said with a huge smile.

Finally Lars voiced his biggest problem, "You're practically a child yourself!"

Skuld's eyes narrowed and she said, "You are what? Eighty?"

"Oldest component is seventy," Lars muttered.

"I'm _three thousand_," Skuld replied imperiously.

"Yeah, but you look and, most importantly, _act _like you're fifteen," Lars commented, feeling a sort of black coil of… something… well up inside him. He was used to having considerable control over his emotions, but this was different.

"**I am a goddess, twice over. Such things are trifling considerations,**" Skuld replied.

"Oh, so it's a 'whose voice can get more reverb' pissing contest is it? **Well I am a daemon, and while this form may be nascent, the essence within me can trace back tens of millions of years. I have infinity behind and before me. A paltry three millennia means nothing to me.**"

"**Then we have time to wait for you to get over your hang ups once we are through this, but so long as we fight with deities we do not have time in the present. We will marry**," Skuld commanded.

Lars considered making a counter-point before he shook his head and he said, "This is a shotgun wedding where the bride is holding the gun, isn't it?"

Pulling out the weapon she had built for Lars, Skuld said with a bright grin, "Better yet, the shotgun being used is the wedding gift from the bride to the groom."

Lars remained silent for a long moment before he sighed and hung his head. He then requested, "Could we at least wait for the _wedding night _until I won't feel like a complete pedophile?"

"Hey! Look, I have boobs! And hips! I'm at least seventeen in human terms!" Skuld protested.

"It's _still _creepy! We have _rules _about this sort of thing where I come from! The sort that end with trying to shove your intestines back into your gut and your genitalia in another time zone if you break them! And that's only what happens _before _you die!" Lars protested. "They're kind of ingrained into not just the human part of me, but the daemonic part!"

"We have eternity, okay? A couple of years don't mean anything to me. But… but I'm scared okay? And I come from a bit of a traditionalist family, and no matter how weird the circumstances, I'd feel worse having a child and not being married than getting married without my family here. Okay?" Skuld replied, holding back the frightened tears.

Suddenly, Lars got it. Skuld had interfered with her sister's love life for years because she was afraid of her family breaking up. Family really was everything to Skuld. Lars had originally felt more of a fatherly/big brotherly relationship, but Gunnhild complicated things. Skuld didn't do well with multiple roles per person. She was Gunnhild's mother. He was Gunnhild's father. Of _course _they had to be married.

"I will note as part of my protest that your insistence we get married like this is one of the marks of immaturity that I am protesting against," Lars replied.

"Duly noted," Skuld said as she began to float higher into the air, her wings manifesting out of her back and wrapping about her for a moment as shadows swirled, changing her outfit into something more elegant. She was wearing a simple sort of gown the grey colour of a brilliant full moon, untouched by yellow or blue tones while a faint aura of shadows surrounded her.

"We're kind of about to go into battle here Skuld, I'm not sure if we have time for…" Lars pointed out.

"**Lars, Daemon of Chaos Undivided, do you declare in front of all of these witnesses that you will be faithful and true to me, a friend and a companion throughout the eons, until the stars lay down their burdens and we are no more?**" Skuld asked; her wings spread wide as she hovered, thousands of refugees gazing up at her in awe, the hem of her dress just barely failing to conceal the fact that her feet were not touching anything.

Lars was quiet for a moment before he shifted his form from utilitarian clothing to something less shabby. Not quite the terrifying ostentation of the commissar outfit, more along the lines of a sea captain's formal dress wear. He replied, "**I do. Do you, Skuld, Norn of the Future, declare in front of all these witnesses that you shall be faithful and true to me, a friend and a companion throughout the eons, until the stars lay down their burdens and we are no more?**"

"**I do**," Skuld replied.

* * *

There was a tiny tremor in the fabric of reality and had Ao actually had the Tablets of Fate on him he would have been able to notice that for the first time in a _long _time one of the deities had actually got married. And none of the temporary _consort _crap that caused all sorts of drama, but actually declared a marriage in the 'this will take the mother of all lawyers to divorce' sort of way.

Of course, if the Tablets hadn't been stolen he would have known almost immediately that Skuld had taken over the Shadow Weave from Shar two weeks ago. Just one more thing to kill the bastards who had taken it for.

* * *

Lars waited calmly at the end of the gallery, watching the point of blackness that signified the boundary. He could feel a breeze as the air was being drawn into the globe, unable to escape as it was heated up. They'd added _way _too much energy to that thing in one form or another over the past few days. If it lost containment it would probably bring down this entire section of the Underdark.

He grinned slightly as he sighted along his new shotgun. _That _would make a great parting gift if they could figure out a way to safely get out of here.

Lars then felt a slight tremor in the ground, causing him to call out to the volunteers, "Alright boys and girls, looks like this is it. Remember, those of you with the guns, don't open fire until I do, we have limited ammunition. Skirmishers, keep the enemy off our backs."

They had three humans, four dwarves of various kinds, two orcs, and one wickedly good shot of a goblin armed with the shotguns and seven rounds apiece. Lars had a dozen 'god killers' and twenty regular, if still divinely blessed, shells. Not enough to do anything anywhere else, but maybe enough to break a charge and for those armed with more primitive weapons to hold off the rest of the forces long enough to buy time for Skuld to get everyone else out.

Then the source of the shaking ground emerged from the globe of darkness.

"Oh. _Fuck_," Lars noted.

They had brought an iron golem. The top layer of its iron body seemed to have been melted off by the incredible heat, but that appeared to have only pissed it off while making it more as it would now surely set fire to anything flammable that it came into contact with.

"I will handle it," a voice next to Lars replied. Looking over, Lars discovered one of the less likely members of the refugees crouched next to him. No one knew exactly what he was, just that he went by the name Shyft and he was either some sort of intelligent, free roaming golem or a guy in a _really _sophisticated suit of enchanted armour. Either way, he had followed the refugees for his own reasons and had not felt inclined to share.

Then, before Lars could say otherwise, the strange being broke from cover and charged down the gallery. Its armour was strangely baroque, almost as if someone had taken a dragon's bones and arranged them into a form that a human could wear, and then dipped it in a curious metal that flowed like quicksilver but was hard as adamant and coloured a dull grey.

Then Shyft reached the edge of the dead magic zone and Lars realized where it got its name, for it began to blur into motion, its feet no longer connected to the ground and reaction and action somehow not quite balancing. Shyft glided along, changing vectors moment to moment, and danced around the gigantic animate piece of iron in the shape of a humanoid. Sliding around behind it, a blade shot out of its right arm above the wrist and glowed brilliant white for a moment before he plunged it into the golem's left calf.

Iron hot iron went flying away as Shyft danced away from the golem once more, steam venting out from the back of Shyft's armour as he purged the waste heat from a blade so hot it could cut through and damage a creature that normally _got stronger in fire_.

"_Damn_," Lars noted while whistling appreciatively. This guy would have been useful during the siege of House Baenre.

Then the portals started to open. Obviously the golem was just a distraction, and somewhat more importantly a screen against fire to the yawning gaps in reality forming just beyond the globe of destruction. Once they were fully open, the things on the other side started spilling out.

"Devils. They're learning," Lars noted as he controlled the feeling of dread. The portals were like open windows to a storm to him, but he had suffered worse when in Hild's domain, and he had grown since then.

Hacking through the golem's right foot at the ankle such that it was no longer capable walking properly, not that such a thing would stop the construct, Shyft glided back and away from the rows of devils forming up in neat lines.

"_One _blessed claymore, that's all I need right now. Alright, runner, go tell Skuld we're leaving _now_. I don't care where we go, it just can't be _here_," Lars replied as he lined up on one of the devils that looked like a sergeant.

"One my signal, fire one, repeat _one_ volley, at the devils! _FIRE!_" Lars cried out as he pulled the trigger for his shotgun and the other gunners around him did so raggedly a second after him. He was however relieved by the fact that he only heard one barrel per man fire.

The result amongst the devils was… interesting. Because of the use of silver in the shot, several of the evil creatures were on the ground clutching at wounds that would not close, spurting oddly coloured blood into the air. Despite the screams and the thrashing, the others remained impassive and calm, and in fact occasionally finished off their own comrades to keep them from disrupting the ranks. They showed no signs of emotion, they just closed ranks around the holes caused by their dead and injured and continued to form up.

Then the pit fiend stepped out of the portal, its leathery red wings draped over its shoulders like a macabre cloak to its hard, ridged scales of armour.

"Well… _fuck!_" Lars noted, the only thing he really could say. "Fire at will on the troops! I'll deal with the leader."

Breaking from cover, Lars rushed down the slight slope of gallery, shotgun at his hip. At this range, he would have to get closer as the spread of the shot made hitting any particular target instead of the closely packed masses of devils more a matter of blind luck than skill. As he got closer, Lars started unloading his shotgun into the front ranks while the pit fiend throwing magic his way like it was going out of style. The creature was obviously scouting out the limits of the dead magic zone more than attacking though.

Then Lars was at the battle line, now with a hole in it where the enemy had taken five rounds of 000-buck from Lars personally and many more 12-gauge blasts from his men and had yet to close the gap of thrashing bodies. Bending low, Lars grabbed one of the fallen pole arms while he used tentacles to feed god killers into his weapon's magazine. Ducking under an incoming fireball, he jammed the blade of the weapon into a convenient crevice in the rock and pole vaulted over the entire formation of lesser devils.

Grinning his wide, shark toothed grin as he arced through the air, Lars fired off one of the rounds made by the most special ladies in his life at the pit fiend at point blank range into its chest. A wave of green and purple fire shot out of his gun as he pulled the trigger, impacting right at the heavily armoured sternum of the devil.

The pit fiend _exploded_.

Not in the gory sort of meaning of blood and guts flying everywhere, but it actually went up like a small nuclear weapon as the hellish components of its being, mostly soul energy harvested from the damned over millennia, came undone all at once. Lars was thrown into the ceiling _hard_ before being he dropped down into the midst of the flattened battle formation of devils, his fallen quite comfortably cushioned by a devil's head.

Not that he needed the cushioning, but it was still nicer than having to go amorphous. Plus it ensured at least one more enemy was dead.

The completely unharmed shotgun still gripped tightly in his hands, Lars scrambled for purchase on the twitching, thrashing pile of bodies and sharp implements. He then noted two rather unfortunate things.

The first was that the globe of destruction Skuld had set up had been destabilized by either the pit fiend's detonation or a stray piece of buckshot enchanted by Skuld having struck it. His eyes going wide, Lars cried out in a psychically enhanced voice, "**RETREAT! THE GLOBE IS GOING TO GO!**"

The second was that the detonation of the pit fiend had destabilized the ceiling of the gallery, which was now coming down in pieces.

Trying to find solid footing, Lars transformed his legs into a quartet of tentacles and attempted to just grope his way out of the pile of devils. The metaphor of a nuclear weapon going off had been stretching it a bit for the pit fiend's death, but not for Skuld's spell cutting loose. She had really overdone that little pressure cooker by a large margin.

Lars looked back at the far end of the gallery where everyone but Shyft had already evacuated. He could feel it; there was no time to get back there before everything turned to fire. The others would wait for him, and they would get caught in the explosion. Lars saluted, and the enigmatic creature saluted back before turning to run.

Lars ran as well, but in the opposite direction, _towards _the still open portals. It was his only chance. He picked one and leapt towards it just as the globe of darkness failed and released all of the light it had been holding inside. A huge amount of matter had been turned to gas, and under the influence of the microwaves and gamma rays that gas had been turned to plasma. It was extremely hot, but confined to a set volume, so the pressure was incredibly high. The drow had stupidly been throwing spells and combustible slaves and males, and thus _energy_, at it for two days trying to figure out why nothing they did worked properly.

A little under a kiloton of energy was released in an instant, shattering rock and wiping out about 90% of the best fighters, wizards, and clerics the drow had to offer in the local Underdark. Most were not actually killed in the explosion as their camps were well back from the battleground, but rather the subsequent cascading collapse of all caverns in a four kilometre radius was what did it.

Up above the ground shook as dozens of cubic kilometres of once open space collapsed into much more compact rubble. The scenery was completely rearranged and a new lake started to form as numerous rivers were diverted. The coastline was different by the end of the season as rivers dried up and new ones started cutting their way across the landscape. The entire north-west of Faerun was re-sculpted by the blast, with much of the Northdark becoming impassable or flooded by the sudden, abrupt destruction of so many tunnels and caverns.

Most of all though, the drow presence in the area was completely obliterated. While Menzoberranzan itself was far enough away to remain relatively unscathed, the city had been stripped of too many in the fighting to continue to prosper. House Oblodra remained, having not participated, huddled as they were in their compound against Lolth's expected wrath, but there was too little left to rule and the city was ripe for plundering by irate neighbours.

Meanwhile, Ched Nasad lay in ruins, the suspended city having lost one of the ossified spider webs that supported one of the upper buildings come loose in the massive earthquake and triggered a domino effect as building after building crashed through layer after layer of the city.

The destruction wrought was incredible, but the author of it had no idea how bad it truly was for he was busy using a portal as an interposition between him and the ball of plasma rushing out to obliterate everything in its path. The magic only lasted a second, but that was enough for Lars to survive the initial flash. Unfortunately as the magic of the portal came undone from the loss of the wizard maintaining it and the destructive energy assaulting it, everything caught in the shadow it cast was pulled into the planar collapse, randomly hurled across the planes of the Realms.

Including Lars.

For a moment the whole world twisted inside out and turned upside down, before Lars discovered that he was standing in another cavern. But this one was bigger. And on a plane where the backs of Lars' eyes itched from all the agony and hatred permeating the place.

And he was surrounded by dozens of rather surprised looking women with black feathered wings and drawing rather sharp looking swords or pulling back on powerful looking bows now that they noticed the intruder.

Lars quashed the first impulse to complain. He'd had enough of complaining. Instead, he pumped his gun, ejecting the remains of the primitive shell that had killed the pit fiend and he looked around him for a moment before he asked, "I just killed a pit fiend, survived a nuclear explosion _and _a random trip across the planes _and _I maimed a god a week ago. So _who wants to go first?_"


	51. Negotiations

**Chapter Fifty: Negotiations**

The people of Nesmé were normally a hearty, if somewhat grim lot, used to weathering the dangers of the Evermoors and in particular the Trollmoors. The start of the Time of Troubles had been hard on them, but they had all closed ranks as a community and were prepared to ride out the worst of it, if indeed the disaster could be ridden out. Already the entire north had seemed to have nearly fallen apart just a few days ago. It was horrible. A day after that the Trollmoors had been filled with horrific roars, sounding like trolls but tinged with fear and pain to such a degree that unless the skies had opened up with fire it surely could not be those fearless brutes.

But for all the hardships the people of Nesmé had endured over the years, nothing prepared them for the sight of a contingent of trolls marching out of the mists of the moors carrying exhausted looking people on their backs and gently in their clawed hands. Admittedly, they weren't the first ones to show up, for ragged looking humans had started appearing a few minutes earlier, followed by strange looking dwarves and gnomes, then other creatures like orcs, goblins, kobolds, an ogre or two, and even drow elves.

A few of them, especially the drow, were armed, but most of those in the strange procession out of the mists looked like they had not seen the sun in years, if they had ever seen it at all. Many of them bore the look of escaped slaves, eager to flee from their masters, but despite the polyglot collection, none of them seemed inclined to fight with each other or with the defenders of Nesmé.

But it was when the trolls started showing up, carrying those too sick and wounded to walk, that the shock really started to sink into the villagers. In their arms was the largest number of surface elves in the group, along with a small gaggle of children. Surprisingly the overwhelming majority of the children were drow.

Then, to top it all off, a massive litter, although mobile platform was really more the case considering it was carried by four of the largest trolls the town had ever seen, was carried into view. Laid out on it were the worst cases, along with the apparent leadership. A young woman, a girl really except for the stern set of her face, sat on a throne adorned with polished skulls while a stout dwarf stood to her left and a freakish looking drow male to her right. It seemed they were directing both the trolls and the efforts to keep the invalids comfortable and alive.

Apparently too heavy for the platform, there was also either some sort of construct or someone in an incredibly expensive piece of armour gliding along the ground, keeping a perimeter around the trolls.

Upon reaching about a bowshot's length from the walls of Nesmé, the group stopped by some unspoken agreement and the four trolls gently lowered their burden to the ground, keeping their heads bowed and deferential to the girl at the centre of all of this bizarre activity.

It was then that the veterans of Nesmé noticed what in particular was bugging them about the whole thing. The four trolls carrying the platform had massive scars across their faces, something that should have been impossible. Given time, trolls could eventually regenerate even damage from fire and acid, just not in times associated with combat. Trolls didn't _get _scars.

The terrifying young woman who commanded the worst enemies Nesmé had ever known walked down the platform, the sick holding up hands to her that she graciously passed her own hands over. One of the trolls, having deposited its cargo of children except for one walked over, a little drow girl riding gleefully on the beast's head… only the creature actually seemed _terrified _of the giggling girl.

Then an enormous pair of grey wings sprouted out of the young woman's back and she took to the air, gently floating up a point where she was level with the walls.

A faint smile crossed her face and she said in a soft voice, "People of Nesmé, I have a proposition for you."

* * *

There was a long, tense silence punctuated only by the creaking of bows and the ringing of the shell casing on the hard stone floor as it rolled away. Neither Lars nor the creatures surrounding him made a single move. The creatures might have never seen a shotgun before, but they weren't stupid and when a stranger teleports into their stronghold bearing a strange weapon, they were not inclined to make the first move.

Especially when aforementioned stranger brags about killing a major devil and wounding a god while showing no signs of bluffing.

Finally a particularly ornately dressed member of the group broke off from the crowd and approached. Surprisingly, amongst the supernaturally beautiful creatures this one possessed a few tinges of grey in her hair about the temples and some fine but noticeable lines about her eyes. She was either going for the MILF look or she was extraordinarily old, considering Lars could tell that these were not mortal creatures. Still, considering the quality of her armour and weapons, it was pretty clear that she was the one in charge.

Her nostrils flared broadly for a second before she said, "You have the stink of chaos about you, and you dare intrude upon us."

Lars glanced warily about him before he said, "Considering that you don't look like the types to accept 'my bad' as an excuse, I'm wondering why you haven't opened fire yet. I'm guessing you want some sort of explanation as to _how _I breached your defences so you can correct any flaws. Thus I'm not going to tell you how I got here as that would give up the only thing keeping me alive right now."

"Clever… but another reason stays our hand. You have the smell of chaos upon you, but you are not a tanar'ri or even one of their older kin. No… no, I have been in existence for eons beyond count and the scent upon you is not of any of the children from the Abyss. You are one of the Elder Evils, one of the beings from beyond the deepest reaches of the Far Realm. Perhaps you are a minor one, but you are of the same type of the creatures that the gods before gods made war on at the beginning of time," the old woman explained.

"Probably not my group or our admittedly 'more likely to do that' relatives, but yeah, I know of the type you're talking about," Lars replied.

"You have power and potential, and we can all sense the power of the weapon in your hand. So tell me young Elder Evil, what do you intend to do?" The woman asked.

"I _intend_ to find my wife and daughter, get back to either my wife's home or my home, and then probably settle down somewhere quiet for the rest of eternity. What is probably going to actually _happen _is that I will end up dragged across a multiverse bigger than you can imagine fighting for my life and the lives of my loved ones against monstrosities that make me look tame. But you know what? I think I can come to accept that fact so long as I can keep those I care about safe and we can enjoy quiet moments eating ice cream or just relaxing in the sunshine every once in a while," Lars explained.

The winged creatures all around Lars seemed confused and discomforted by his response, possibly because they expected something more evil from him. Frowning slightly, he added on, "Oh, and if I have to wade through an ocean of blood and pave the road before me with the skulls of my enemies, then so be it. Where I come from that sort of thing is considered sweet."

"I see…" the leader replied quietly, obviously not understanding. "So you intend to fight your way out of here?"

Lars shrugged ever so slightly while not relaxing his aim with his shotgun. "Where I come from, we have two phrases that come to mind. The first is: Walk softly but carry a big stick. The second is: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley. Right now I'm carrying the biggest stick down here and I'm not afraid to use it, but I would prefer _not _to get into a fight. So let's make a deal. I leave you alone, you leave me alone."

The leader pursed her lips and said, "I am afraid that our laws are absolute on this. You must die for your trespass."

Lars rolled his eyes and he said, "The fact that you haven't opened fire yet means that you are either not so devoted to those laws that you will fanatically attack, or you have loopholes you are currently using. Like for instance, I'm sure that there is some way you could allow an emissary into your territory."

Her lips still a tight, annoyed line, she said, "You are… unexpectedly clever about such things for a chaotic being."

"You've obviously never had to fill out paperwork in Europe," Lars muttered under his breath.

"But I am afraid that we do not accept emissaries within our domain so lightly. You would have to offer us something rather substantial, an alliance that we do not wish to accept, by our laws," the leader replied.

Lars' eye twitched for a moment before he said, "You want protection from my kind."

There was a general fluttering of wings and creaking of bowstrings, but silence remained.

"You see me standing here and you think, 'Oh no, the Elder Evils are returning!' because I obviously made it in here, where I'm not supposed to be. You're scared because you're not the baddest motherfuckers in the valley anymore. So you're keeping me alive, maybe so that you can cut a deal and get your little slice of the pie left alone," Lars suggested.

The leader frowned deeply, her face crinkling ever so slightly before she replied, "That is not our thought on the matter… but it is close enough that we can work off it. We are the Erinyes, former angels who have sided with the devils in their struggle against chaos. The Heavens are deluded in thinking that they can stop the demons, and the worse things that lurk beyond the Abyss, with half measures. We remember the Elder Evils and the effort it took to drive them off far enough that only the things spawned in the Abyss remained. You stink of chaos, and yet there is reason in your mind."

"Where I come from, Chaos is all things, including Order. We are… what we are. We have no particular side in the struggle between Order and Disorder, and in fact Disorder does not align well with our current goals," Lars replied truthfully.

"So it would seem. We want assurances that whatever domain of the Far Realm, or worse, that you come from, you will not harm us or our goals," the leader demanded.

"Now we're talking. I cannot exactly make air tight guarantees on the behalf of my superiors, but… _but_… I am empowered as an emissary," Lars said, conveniently leaving out the fact that he was an emissary by accident and default. "There are a few things we can talk about. For example, a non-aggression treaty should be sufficient. You leave us alone and we'll leave you alone, provided you don't break some of our more important rules."

"You have rules?" The leader asked, clearly shocked by a chaotic creature having a rule important enough to include in negotiations.

"Yes. Really, just one major one. No harming of children. Okay, if there's a war and some kids get hurt in the cross fire, that's war. Not fun, but there was nothing intentional. Our gods just don't like to see children get hurt intentionally, although neglect is pretty bad too, and have rather strict opinions about it. Ones involving unpleasant things happening to transgressors… and judging from the atmosphere of this place, you all know a great deal about such things."

There was the slightest shuffling amongst the winged warriors before the leader admitted, "The reason we are so… adamant about our laws here is that only the greatest of allies may step foot within our rookery. This is where the next generation of Erinyes are born, where the past and the future of our species meet. It is protected from all others, including other devils. Only Asmodeus has permission to walk here without requesting an audience, and only the dukes and archdukes of Hell or gods that we have particular alliances with may come at all."

Lars grinned before he asked, "Is it because they are dukes or gods, or because they are your allies?"

"The latter, but they are the only ones worth allying with," the leader replied.

"But if a sufficiently powerful being were to request an alliance it would be permitted?" Lars inquired.

"So long as said alliance did not interfere with any prior agreements or our own laws," the leader replied.

"I see… well, I do happen to have the ear of a local goddess, sort of as it is a rather strange tale to tell, and I am certain that my own gods will listen should I present to them an agreement. You wish your rookery protected from any potential attack by my people… and you _also _wish to learn more, do you not? This is why you speak of such things to me. You wish to fill my halls and the halls of my allies and superiors with vipers under the guise of allies, do you not?" Lars asked.

"Clever. And yes, this is what we desire. We have our tithes to Asmodeus in souls gathered and in military service rendered, but that ancient contract does not take up our entire population. We have other contracts, but there are always a few who remain to either protect the colony or perform tasks for the benefit of the rookery. Our contracts are binding, both ways," the leader explained.

"Non-aggression from those I personally command and guarantee of opening diplomatic ties with the intent to expand the pact to all my people and free and safe passage for me and my family through your land and around your people. Name your price and we will begin negotiating," Lars replied.

"Twenty of my daughters to accompany you and for you to never come here again unless invited, nor mention how you got here to others," the leader demanded.

"No contest deal on the second condition, but I only want five devils around me," Lars replied.

"Thirteen," the leader countered.

"How's about eight? It's a sacred number to my people, although six through nine are all sacred in different ways," Lars offered.

"Ten, its round and neutral to both of us," the leader offered.

"I can live with ten of your vipers. I assume they will act under their own command?" Lars inquired.

"They will be under your command, _ally_. Shall we seal the deal?" The leader asked.

Lars rolled his eyes and said, "Let me see the _full _contract first."

The Erinyes snapped her fingers and a long parchment covered in ink appeared in her hands. Taking it with a tentacle so that he could keep his gun up, Lars went over it, summoning up the Infernal language from one of his recently acquired souls and he began making little marks while humming slightly.

"What are you doing?" The leader asked nervously.

"Removing clauses I didn't agree to. You've never dealt with a Ministry of Fish and Game the way I have, although technically I've dealt with about three dozen different forms of the idea over about a hundred different lifetimes. Ha! Look at this fine print! It's a joke! Back before they were all killed any slick shit attorney fresh out of law school could tear this apart," Lars replied, one eye on the contract, two on the Erinyes.

The devils looked… miffed… at the suggestion that their ability to produce binding legalese was lacking, but when Lars handed it back for their review, the leader just looked at it, blinked, and shouted out, "What did you do to our poor language?"

"Ah, sorry, I was importing legalese from French bureaucracies and applied the English language's ability to pin down another tongue and horrifically violate it to your own Infernal. Is the meaning clear?" Lars asked.

The devils carefully examined the altered document for a long time as a group, carefully annotating it in places while giving Lars evil looking glances before they said, "For a being of chaos you have quite the skill for making laws dance to your whim."

Lars shrugged and said, "We're a bit looser than before but we have a tradition of extremely lawful and organized societies, just not in any sort of way that you would recognize or understand at first. I'm sure you would adapt well… although maybe not to the current incarnation… but upon initial contact you would be overwhelmed by the alien structure. You would actually be considered uncultured primitives in all likelihood."

This left the Erinyes silent for a moment before they handed the contract back to Lars. Looking over it, Lars made a few minor corrections before handing it back. The leader then nodded her head and bit into her thumb, pressing a bloody print into the bottom. Lars shrugged and pressed his own thumb into the parchment, extruding some warp-stuff to make his mark.

For a moment there was a small stain of shifting colours before it morphed into a black star of Chaos. Lars was almost content with it before he noticed the symbol starting to shift once more, the arms of the star starting to twist and braid about until there was a new and unique symbol. The lower three had formed what vaguely looked like a nautical anchor while the top of the symbol looked almost like tree branches twisted together, with the central up pointing arm widen out to produce a distinctive hammer effect.

Lars looked at it for a while before he sighed and realized he had just figured out the Chaos symbol for him and Skuld.

Oh, and judging from the cries of surprise on amongst the Erinyes, Lars figured that all of the ones assigned to him had just been marked as well. He gave their leader a blank stare and said, "Honestly, I had no idea _that _would happen. Sorry."

"The fact that the contract hasn't magically informed me of a break indicates that what just happened was non-hostile, so I'll let it pass. Now go, get out of our colony," the leader demanded.

"Right away. Umm… which way is out? I got here via a portal accident," Lars admitted, now that he had secured safe passage.

There was a collective groan from the Erinyes.


	52. Truth and Machinations

**Chapter Fifty-one: Truth and Machinations**

Ao sat quietly at his study, such as it was, poring over the reports on the search for Skuld. This couldn't have come at a worse time as he had intentionally limited his own personal servants over the millennia, preferring to work through the gods rather than his own agents as he attempted to shield himself from the drawbacks of his position. Unfortunately, with the gods kicked out for unruly behaviour, he had to scrounge together the resources he needed to search for Skuld.

At least when he had explained it to the Almighty he had agreed that if his underlings had already defied him then letting them know about Skuld would probably just endanger her further. He had still been chewed out for letting it get to that point, but the Almighty had agreed that this made things more difficult. Especially since Skuld and her ally, along with anything they produced, would be undetectable to divine senses, including Ao's. Unless he was physically looking at her, any scrying, divine or mortal, would just miss her. This had to be done the hard, needle in an infinite haystack way.

At least now Ao had a lead. Someone had blown up a large chunk of Northern Faerun a few days ago by causing a huge explosion in the Underdark, which while _possible _for one of the Avatars to pull off seemed unlikely. It smacked of something an outsider to the Realms would do.

Ao was also not surprised when one of the few beings still capable of travel between the planes showed up in his office. He had 'left the door open' anticipating just such a thing happening.

"General," Ao noted, not taking his attention off the reports in front of him.

"I have not been called that in a very long time," a silken, sibilant voice noted.

"You still retain the rank, not matter what the others say. And while I feel you are far too ambitious and treacherous for your own good, you perform your appointed duties as demanded of you. More than can be said of many of the current crop of deities," Ao replied.

"Thank you, _sir_," Asmodeus said graciously, bowing slightly.

Ao, in no mood for the games of the leader of the archdevils, rolled his eyes and said, "Cut to the chase. I'm extraordinarily busy right now and if you have approached me with something pertaining to my current task, I want to know. If not, I want you to leave. _Quietly._"

"Ah, the Tablets of Fate? No, but I feel that this is a matter of somewhat greater importance, and as part of my duties, I felt it critical that I ensure that you are aware of it," Asmodeus replied before reaching into his luxurious, astronomically expensive robes and pulled out a scrap of parchment with a symbol on it.

"A few days ago, a colony of Erinyes under my command made a contract of employment with a creature that used this symbol as a personal mark, a creature their leader, one of the eldest devils still in existence, insisted came from an Elder Evil. All attempts to locate this creature or the Erinyes that accompanied him have failed," Asmodeus explained gravely.

Ao looked at the symbol and how it was charged with alien magic for a second before he asked, "That's not an original, is it?"

"No, it seems that the very geometry causes it to accumulate magic of a like I have not seen since… well, you know," Asmodeus replied.

Nodding, Ao said, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, it does relate to my current concern. The first thing you should know is that the Void Born, or rather the Elder Evils as you call them, are not returning. This is an isolated incident and I want the creature brought to _me _if you find it. _Alive and unharmed_. Got that?"

Asmodeus grinned slightly and bowed magnanimously before he said, "Of course."

Ao was quiet for a long moment before he said, "There is… one other thing. But before I tell you anything more, you must swear a binding oath not to leak any details of what you learn to any other being. You're a snake, but I know you keep your word, even if you like to twist it. _Don't _make me compel you, because you know I can."

"To swear an oath must mean that what I will hear is very important and presumably very dangerous. What incentive do I have to keep this knowledge?" Asmodeus asked slyly.

"Do the tasks related to this knowledge and I will heal your wounds," Ao replied flatly.

Asmodeus was quiet for a long moment before he said, "I, Asmodeus, Ruler of the Nine, Archdevil of All the Hells, do swear a binding oath before Ao not to reveal or insinuate any facts or details revealed to me in this meeting."

Ao nodded, knowing that the fiend was now bound by his own nature. Ao then said, "You remember the most ancient ages, when the Abyss was the crack in reality that the Elder Evils poured in from, when the Far Realm was more than just a skin surrounding the Realms like an infection. You know how the demons are the remnants of those invaders, the stain of their destructive ways still part of the Abyss."

"I do," Asmodeus replied darkly. It was the issue of how to fight those ancient wars that had resulted in his exile from the Heavens to the Nine Hells. The Blood War was the continuation of that conflict.

"Well my people called them the Void Born, or alternatively in our darker moods 'Things That Should Not Be'," Ao replied.

Asmodeus was silent for a long time, and Ao broke it when he said with a grim chuckle, "Are you surprised that I am not unique? That there are others like me? Do you want to know my full name and title from all those aeons ago, when the Realms were not even imagined yet?"

Asmodeus nodded, his curiosity overwhelming his sense of personal, detached decorum. He suspected he may have been the first being to ever know these things and he did not want to spoil it. The knowledge, even if he was bound not to tell it, could prove far too valuable.

"I am Ao Inkfingers, Naval Clerk in the Logistics, assigned to the 3rd fleet, serving aboard the dreadnought _Magnhildr_. I am a Third Generation Lord in the House of Space, and one of two remaining members of that House, the other being the Third King of the House, the Second Generation Lord Odin Allfather, also known as the Almighty by his own people. I am perhaps one of a dozen beings in all the multiverse that fought in the Extinction War and one of perhaps two beings that knows even a piece of the history of the Disaster. I am older than you can imagine, older than most of the surviving Void Born, the beings you call the Elder Evils," Ao explained in fully deific glory.

Asmodeus absorbed this for a moment before he asked, "What happened?"

Ao frowned, obviously dredging up painful memories, before he said, "My people, the Lords of the House of Space, were the descendents of a truly elder race with full command of their reality. I only know a tiny piece of the full history as the Almighty is the only one still alive who knew anyone from that age. I have no idea exactly what happened, but there was a Disaster, something so horrible that it forced the construction of a wall about a collection of _billions _of realities just to protect the rest of infinity. Many of the survivors fled to the still stable outside multiverse to establish their successor states. My people were left behind to attempt to clean up, or at least contain, the mess. There were unforeseen complications."

"The… Void Born," Asmodeus concluded, pausing to use the correct term.

"Yes and no. The Void Born were an unexpected problem, but alone they would have been manageable," Ao said before he waved his hand and summoned forth an image of the Realms and the planes that composed it. He then started to zoom out, and out, and _out,_ until the Realms were a tiny glowing point amongst an ocean of countless billions of such points, all contained within a great sphere.

"This is a map of the multiverse as we know it, although it hasn't been updated in… well you know how tricky time is to measure for beings such as us. But even then, it has not been updated in a _long _time, not since before the Realms were founded. There are seven points of interest. There are the four Gates, the Eye, and the two Houses. As you can see, we are quite close to one of those Houses, my birth universe, the House of Space. On the opposite side of this construct is the House of Time," two points at the top and bottom of the sphere lit up to punctuate Ao's words.

"The Gates control access in and out of this great construct and into the realms consumed in the great storm caused by the Disaster. For safety purposes we made them unable to connect directly to each other or to the Eye or the Houses. A rather fortunate thing considering what happened next. You see, our ancestors did not fully understand what they had unleashed and the turbulence of the cosmic storm triggered two protrusions of energy above and below the Eye. Destructive, destabilizing energies swirled up to crash into the Houses and cause massive devastation. The magic of the Far Realm is but a taste of what we faced. The Houses were insulated, but not to the same degree as the much more heavily fortified Gates. We lost complete contact with the Lord of the House of Time. No idea what happened to them. If they survived they probably wonder the same about us. Around the same timethe Void Born struck," Ao explained.

"Such chaos…" Asmodeus muttered while looking fearfully at the map laid out before him and the destruction implied. It offended his sensibilities greatly for such a neat order to collapse so.

"It gets worse. The Void Born were… _things _that emerged from the Disaster, semi-sentient engines of destruction, birthed in the Eye Wall, the universes inundated with energy. We sterilized them all as a last act, but their attacks on the Gates were particularly troublesome. The Houses were being damaged by the energies kicked up by the storm and our responsibilities involved controlling our prospective domains. Space and time were breaking down without our input and the Gates were being attacked by horrific monstrosities. One by one they all shut down before we could even get to them. The first to go was completely invaded by the Void Born and only managed to prevent an outbreak to the rest of the multiverse by sealing them all inside. The controller went insane last we heard. One of the Gates next to it went similarly mad at the loss of its companion and shut the doors. The other two shut down shortly after, isolating their control programs into artefacts with no will of their own, locking away the majority of their power," Ao detailed out.

"And the Realms?" Asmodeus inquired.

"While bombarding the Eye Wall at long range, and I mean _really _long range, we were attacked by one of the more powerful Void Born and our fleet was wiped out. I got to an escape pod and was the only survivor. I drifted about until I managed to make contact with the new ruler of the House, Odin. He was the last remaining Lord there, although I suppose if you count his wife at the time that would make three of us, but Hild was not born to the House but was an ambitious vassal so she doesn't exactly count. Out of pity and a sense of loneliness, he started sending me the information I needed to start building my own bubble of stability. Then the gods started popping up and a few lesser Void Born started attacking and you know the rest," Ao said.

"Then what is this creature that has arrived in the Realms?" Asmodeus asked suspiciously.

Ao frowned for a second before he said, "The Almighty did some research into the oldest files and he thinks it is the product of an experiment by the Lords of the House of Time into the creation of Void Born. They jammed two universes close together such that they would leak into each other and the beings they seeded each realm with would come into conflict. The last report states that they produced some rather interesting results before the Extinction War went into full swing and we lost contact. The creature is by all accounts quite rational and intelligent for being capable of travelling in the Void unprotected and the Almighty wants to thank him for his actions… in saving the Almighty's daughter. Who is _also _here."

Asmodeus suddenly got why Ao was being so open with him. "Your superior's daughter is here, within the Realms?"

"Yes. And he wants her _safe_. I don't think you quite comprehend how powerful he or his daughter is. I can erase you and every mention of your name with a snap of my fingers, although the damage to the Realms means I won't unless you push me. I was a paper pusher, if a military one and a good one, in my previous life. The Almighty controls the language that permits the existence of everything in the Realms. He can literally take away my power at a whim. And if he gets mad enough, he's going to send a battalion of his best warriors, probably led by a veteran from the Extinction Wars if I had to bet, and start tearing the place apart looking for his daughter. His Valkyries _will _kill anything that stands between them and their objective, including power holders such as you or me. So it is imperative we find her and fast," Ao said.

"But someone had to go and steal the Tablets of Fate," Asmodeus said, seeing immediately the problem the Lord of the Gods was in.

Waving it off, Ao said, "The Tablets are incidental, I don't need them. It's the fact that several of the gods no longer respect my authority. Skuld can, if she puts a little effort into it, rewrite reality as effectively as her father. If I let the same gods who stole the Tablets know about her, I highly doubt they will respect my commands or the commands of her father, and since I don't know which of them did it or knew about it…"

"But since I am not a god I and my servants cannot access the domains where the Tablets were stored, except for on occasions of open invitation such as this one, it _couldn't _have been me," Asmodeus summarized.

Ao narrowed his eyes slightly at the devil before he said, "Let me be clear here Asmodeus. I didn't agree with your exile, but neither did I stop it. You're too ambitious by far. Don't even _think _about trying to seize Skuld for your own purposes. She could destroy many of your rivals and bring you power supreme, but she is strong willed and her family is strongly opposed to the sort of order you represent. If you find her, turn her over to me and content yourself with my favour and the favour of her father. Push the issue and you will quickly find yourself _gone_, removed from reality as if you never existed, and it won't necessarily be at my hand. You've never broken the rules in your entire existence, even if you have played the system and bent the laws, so don't start now."

"I would never _dream _of doing such a thing," Asmodeus replied with a toothy, aristocratic grin.

"I'm _sure _you wouldn't. Deploy your fiends as you see fit to Faerun to find Skuld and the creature. You are not to interfere with local affairs, just search. Divination will not work on either of them or those near them, they are outside such things. Do _not _push a confrontation, just find them and report back to me. If your forces find her, I _will _heal the wounds to your body, _at the very least_," Ao offered.

"A _most generous _proposal Lord Ao. I will begin the preparations immediately. It will take a week perhaps to marshal the forces I can trust to not step out of line or ask any questions. Is that acceptable?" Asmodeus inquired slyly.

"Most acceptable. Now go. The faster we get this resolved, the less likely we'll have a battalion of pissed of unstoppable warrior women rampaging through the Realms burning everything in front of them and supplying spear enemas to those who failed to find and protect Skuld," Ao said before waving dismissively, returning to his reports.

Asmodeus bowed and then disappeared in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

* * *

Lolth had been at the heart of her army of drow when the explosion and collapse wiped out her most faithful followers. She had spent the past _week _trapped under a mountain of rock, her skin burnt off and slowly regenerating by the terrible forces unleashed. The damage had been painful, but at least it had healed, unlike the maiming that had occurred to her when she had been struck in the breast. That had been a divine weapon to do that, and as Gruumsh could explain, such wounds _never _healed. Lolth would remain with but a single breast for the rest of her existence.

Her priestess' had not exactly enjoyed the demands of emulation, but after the first couple of executions the ritual maiming had begun in earnest. Unfortunately all of those so marked had died, so it would take a bit more time to spread the word. Once Lolth got out of this situation. That could take until the gods were allowed back into their domains, as while she could keep the tons of rock above her from crushing her for an indefinite period, she could not actually escape.

Some time into the interminable wait trapped under the stones, she felt the vibration of large metal poles scraping on rock, and then the rumble of massive amounts of stone shifting. While not quite enough to escape, it did allow Lolth a little breathing room.

"Ha ha! My followers! You have come for me!" Lolth cried out triumphantly.

"Not quite…" Shar replied into the crevice where Lolth was wedged.

"Shar! You _bitch!_ That whore was using _your_ magic!" Lolth cried out.

There was a slight hiss before Shar said, "Yes, _she was_. She _stole_ it from me. Hence why I am here. Now, on the one hand, I could have my minions shift these rocks and crush you, claiming your portfolio for my own and taking the Underdark completely uncontested from this point on. On the _other hand _I find that my rivalry for the races of darkness with you seems currently outweighed by my _seething hatred _for the bitch who stole from me and who presumably also maimed you. Thus I find myself at a crossroads. Kill you now and accept a little more power later, or let you out so that the two of us can hunt her down and then share in the revenge. Combining all the avatars of our pantheon together, we should be able to kill her quite nicely."

Lolth was silent for a long, long time before she said, "Let me out, I hate you less than _her._"

"I agree," Shar said before the stones started shifting again and Lolth found herself pulled out from under the crack by smooth, pale hands. In a tiny bubble around the rubble a half dozen shadow giants working with a pair of adamantium poles had managed to pry open the rocks, while the avatar of Shar stood in their centre, grasping Lolth.

There was a slight exchange of sneers between the two goddesses. Shar looked greatly, if subtly, diminished without the power of the Shadow Weave coursing through her, while Lolth was maimed and still suffered burns from the blast that entombed her.

"Go Lolth, gather your Dark Seldarine and your demonic allies and I shall rally my allies Loviatar and Talona and any allies they might bring. We will make war upon this usurper and take revenge for the wrongs she has inflicted upon us," Shar said in a seething voice.

"You can have your Shadow Weave back, but I want access after and the bitch's tits for a hat… and to participate when we let Loviatar loose on her," Lolth demanded.

"Of course. You know, this could be the beginning of a useful alliance," Shar said with a smile.

"It may very well be," Lolth replied with a grin.

Nothing unites rivals quite like hatred for an external third party.

* * *

The Riders of Nesmé watched quietly from the bushes as the creatures approached their town from the road to Silverymoon. They had landed a few minutes ago, having spotted the town from the air before landing and cloaking themselves in illusions. But the Riders had seen what they were. They were devils. Abominable creatures only deserving the sword and the axe.

And the creature that the wicked goddess described as her consort was with them. They had known that any being that could command such abominable creatures as was in her following must be evil, but this sealed the cake.

Slowly and quietly bringing back his bow, the leader said, "Shoot to kill and don't let them get back to their dark goddess."


	53. Visions of the Future

**Chapter Fifty-two: Visions of the Future**

Sometimes it really, really, _really _didn't pay to be proactive, as the Riders of Nesmé were finding out as bands of shadows bound them and their mounts still. Their little ambush had gone well to start, downing three of the she-devils and making a pincushion of the male leader. Unfortunately, the strange creature just looked exasperated at the arrows sticking out of him and at the riders charging down at him with lances, and then the devils returned fire with a withering, rapid fire volley of flaming arrows that took out several of the Riders.

Then the now thoroughly perforated creature took a strange object off its back and activated the strange wand/staff-thing with a tremendous roar of fire and noise, causing Andre, the paladin at the forefront of the charge, to die messily as his head exploded. The creature then hurled some sort of mental magical attack that slew Andre's lieutenant Kris, his mental screams as his soul was shredded causing the all the horses and many of the men to panic, destroying the momentum of the charge before it had a chance to hit the tiny cluster of devils.

It was at that point that the damnable dark goddess had shown up, some sort of fallen angel emerging out of her back and carrying her aloft. She had immediately sent a wave of shadows over their band and immobilized them all.

She had then run up to the savage killer at the heart of the formation and jumped into his arms, planting a kiss on his face before she disengaged due to the fact that the projectiles sticking out of his body made such a move rather awkward.

Now she was quietly talking with the monster, which was nonchalantly pulling the arrows out of his head and trying to talk reason to the goddess, who kept sending the Riders murderous glances. They in turn tried to glare her and her damned creatures to death. Meanwhile the she-devils looked over the ones that had gone down in the initial volley, and unfortunately one had already managed to stand back up, if a touch shakily. The other two however looked like they were not going to get back up.

On the whole, it hadn't been worth it, but still, it was good to see two devils erased from the multiverse.

Then the creature said something as it pulled the last arrow out of its body that made the dark goddess grin in a fashion that caused even the devils to take a step back from the palpable aura of menace.

The goddess took a step forward and said, "Riders of Nesmé, you attacked my husband and his allies out of some sort of misguided desire to punish evil without first learning all the facts, an act he and I consider evil. For your transgressions, you are punished to become what you are, _forever_. Ride the skies, seeking out evil, true evil, to atone for your sins."

She then started chanting, her angel singing along with her while wisps of shadow began to swirl about her feet. Tendrils reached out and wrapped about the dead devils, causing their forms to combust, the hellfire adding embers and ash to the shadow. Once fully combusted, she drew the umbral embers back to her, clutching a tornado of black and orange to her breast.

Then, with a terrible cry, she hurled the energies at the Riders, catching in a swirling holocaust of destructive energies that flayed them and their horses to the bone… but not beyond that. As their own flesh burned, they did not die. No, a far worse fate awaited them.

The metal of their armour and weapons peeled back and melted, flowing about their burning bodies and reforming into thick chains that bound the riders to servitude. Their clothing combusted but did not turn to ash and fly away, rather reforming into the thick garments of semi-nomadic herders they had never seen but that Lars and Skuld knew very well.

When the dread spell was complete, approximately three hundred men and three hundred horses had been transformed, all their flesh stripped away and turned to halos of hellfire and night black smoke about their burning skeletons. They wore long coats and heavy leathers that seemed perpetually singed but never actually ignited. Wrapped around them were chains of steel that seemed to only be solid on a thin, cracked crust on the surface for one could see the white hot glow of molten metal beneath. From their right arms the chains draped down, long whips of molten cold iron wreathed in hellfire ready for use in the service of the one that had just claimed them. Meanwhile their mounts had been transformed into skeletal nightmares, snorting yellow-white flames while their glowing orange hooves struck sparks of molten iron across the ground.

Paladins, rangers, fighters, and even clerics of other gods had made up the Riders of Nesmé. They had all been transformed, every last one of them involved in the attack, their souls claimed irretrievably by Skuld's magic.

"The fires of hell that composed your victims shall burn you forever, and lightning shall lash your backs. Every blow you strike against an enemy shall reverberate with you, their pain becoming yours and visa versa, but death shall never claim you. Only those who can see beyond your horrific exterior can grant you love and gratitude shall be able to quench the fires that burn at you… for a time. Go now my Ghost Riders and gallop across the skies and seek your salvation in the arms of others less judgemental than you. Go my Wild Hunt and pursue the wicked that would torment the weak, regardless of species. _Go!_" Skuld commanded.

Compelled by more than just the fear and pain that tormented them, the Riders mounted their flaming steeds and whipped them on with their chains, striking sparks as they took to the skies, the hooves of their horses finding purchase upon thin air as if it were a cobbled street. As they ascended, the trails of smoke about them coalesced into dark black thunderclouds, lightning leaping from the storm to lash at the riders, causing them to cry out with pain but harming them not in the least.

Back on the ground, Lars turned to the utterly stunned and more than a little terrified looking Erinyes and said, "I would like to introduce you all to my very recent wife, Skuld."

* * *

For Lars' part, getting hit with about three dozen arrows simultaneously had just put the capstone on a really crappy week spent stuck in a hell dimension with his mood steadily worsening while the lawful nature of the plane he was on tried to reject his chaotic essence, making him itch while accompanied by ten _very _annoying ladies. It wasn't that they were actively annoying, it was just that they made Lars suddenly appreciate his gods a great deal more.

He suddenly realized why they pushed the medieval evil look so much. Medieval evil was _stupid! _It made for very effective cover for the true intelligence of the gods.

Oh sure, the devils were quite intelligent and quick witted, it was just that they could not comprehend many of the finer philosophical points Lars tried to talk to them about despite the fact that he was an amateur. The worst bit was that they were the ones who kept bringing up discussions of order and chaos or good and evil.

Finally they had made it to a portal and from there back to the material world where emotions were not so polluting. They had then scouted about with teleportation and flight for a bit before Lars decided to land near a village with a large camp next to it. Lars had decided to land on the opposite side of the village from the camp so as to not spook the locals if this wasn't the right place.

And he got a bodkin or eight to the face for his trouble.

Watching the bastards who did it ascending into the sky made Lars grin, especially when he factored in the gobsmacked looks on the faces of the Erinyes. They had just received a rather stark demonstration on the difference between their morality and his, although Skuld's reaction may have been overdoing it just a bit. Then again he had suggested the whole ghost rider thing.

Nodding sagely, Skuld then turned back to Lars and tackled him, dragging him to the ground as she attempted to smother him, gripping him tightly and driving his face into her chest while she cried about missing him. Had Lars needed to breathe, he might have been smothered by her breasts, which were admittedly filling out nicely and were at least a B cup now, if still mostly hidden beneath her voluminous clothing.

Morphing his body, he slipped out of Skuld's grip so that while she was still on top of him, at least now they were face to face. Swirling tears of penumbrae ran down her face like grey ink and dripped on his face, causing him to say gently, "Hey, where's the scary vengeful goddess now?"

"She's done punishing the naughty mortals and now she wants to kiss her husband," Skuld said wetly. "You can be such an idiot sometimes, you know? Why'd you have to charge the enemy lines like that? Are you _that _afraid of the honeymoon?"

Smirking, Lars said, "You know I do what I do so that not only can we have a honeymoon, but so that our child might grow up to one day have her own."

That triggered fresh tears mixed with laughter and Skuld said, "Just kiss me you dumb ass."

"Uh… there is now a rather large crowd of onlookers," Lars pointed out.

"So _just _make it a kiss. And I want it a good one, with plenty of tongue… or tongues in your case," Skuld demanded breathlessly, her hair falling out of place to create a little screen for their faces as she bent down over Lars.

Still, from the right angle one could see their lips locking and _things _exiting Lars' mouth and entering Skuld's. After a few seconds they broke off, Skuld panting heavily as she touched her throat delightedly while she still straddled Lars' stomach.

Looking up at the still rather surprised Erinyes, Lars said jokingly to Skuld, "In the tradition of my people, I present to my wife a small harem for our own amusement."

Before the Erinyes had time to respond to that Skuld placed a finger on her chin ponderingly and said, "Can they lick a good pussy or are they exclusively cock munchers?"

Lars burst out laughing while the devils stared at the impropriety. Lars had been a terrible influence on Skuld, especially the infusion of tiny bits of daemon, and her mouth had been getting fouler when she got into certain moods.

Gently pushing of Skuld so she would get up, Lars stood and brushed the dirt off him before he said, "Alright, more formally, Skuld, I would like you to meet the Erinyes I have made a contract with, although we are now down two members. Still surviving are Beth, Autu, Orin, Farongi, Lalirgor, Caut, Cagliro, and their leader Falagoro. Erinyes, this is Skuld, my wife."

As one the Erinyes bowed and said, "As we are bound to serve your mate, so we serve you, our lady."

"Don't mind them when they try to tempt you to evil, they're really bad at it," Lars replied dismissively.

Falagoro frowned at him and protested, "I have personally damned over a hundred mortals!"

Waving it off, Lars replied, "Yeah, but you were playing in the kiddie leagues. People live shit lives here with few places to turn for help and they're easy to tempt and trick with petty trinkets and cheap tactics. Try taking on a more advanced, prosperous people and you'd have to really step up your game."

"Mortals will always lust after power greater than their station," Falagoro retorted.

Lars chewed on his upper lip for a moment in contemplation before he turned to Skuld and asked, "What have you built so for?"

Skuld grinned and said, "Enough Enfields for a demonstration."

"Sweet. Girls, sit back and watch as I remove fear through its inspiration," Lars said as he followed Skuld back to town.

* * *

The people of Nesmé watched in terror from within the confines of their town as the goddess that had enslaved their enemies and just destroyed their protectors walked into her camp, a strangely yet ornately dressed man following behind her. They walked into a tent and then came out carrying what looked like a very poorly constructed club as it was far too thin to be truly effective and the metal and wood was distributed all wrong.

The man then moved over to a cleared area and set up what looked like several archery targets. He then took up position at the far end of the range he had established and turned to the town, announcing in a booming voice, "People of Nesmé! You have offended us when we offered you peace, friendship, and trade. Your Riders have attacked us unprovoked when we offered to lend you our strength. We are angered, but those of you hiding in your homes did not break the agreement Skuld made with you, so our wrath shall remain in check. So instead, we offer you a demonstration of _true _power."

The man then raised the strange metal thing to his shoulder, as if it were a crossbow, and with a terrible crack and a puff of greasy smoke that smelled strongly of brimstone to those close enough to notice such things, he caused one of the heads of the dummies to explode in a shower of straw and splinters of wood.

Turning back to the town, he said, "This here is a rifle, approximately modelled after the Pattern 1853 Enfield although incorporating some of the characteristics of a Springfield 1861. It fires a .577 calibre Minie ball bullet, nasty little round that can easily remove a limb if it doesn't just blow your guts or brains out. For a muzzleloader, it has excellent range, accuracy, and rate of fire. But the _real _power of this beauty here is that with the proper tools and training, _anyone _can make one. This is a major advantage as anyonecan _use _one. Typical training time is a few weeks to achieve proficiency, instead of the years it takes to train with a sword or decades for magic."

Holding the rifle high, he said, "_This _is power! _This_ is more power, range, accuracy and output than a crossbow combined with the ease of learning of a pike. The single crack you just heard was the precursor to a thousand of these babies going off all at once in single volley of death. This is also a representation of the future. This is steel and industry and ingenuity all rolled into a single symbol. This gun represents a society that never fears where the next meal is coming from. This gun represents a society that only fears fear itself. This gun represents mastery over the world."

Some rather brave or stupid individual cried out, "We don't want your demon magic!"

Lars laughed a long and booming laugh before he cried out, "This weapon was invented by the malignant little minds of _humans! _There is nothing magical about this weapon, other than just how brutally effective it is in comparison to the pointy toys you have now. Although it in turn is a toy in comparison to the next, harder step."

Lars tossed the rifle over to Skuld, who adroitly caught it before pulling out a much more sinister looking weapon, one that was more metal than wood. Tossing it to Lars, she then pulled out a curving, sickle shaped piece of metal and tossed it to him.

"Take a good look at this sucker, because it's going to be years before we'll have the ammo manufacturing capacities to actually make widespread use of it. People of Nesmé, I present to you the Kalashnikov!" Lars cried out before he opened up on full auto, shredding the target dummies in horrific sprays of wood and straw.

He then ejected the sickle part of it and caught a fresh one from Skuld. Turning back to the town, he asked with a grin, "Do I need to use up another magazine, or do you all get the idea?"

There was stunned silence from the town in the wake of the unholy racket.

"In the following weeks we will work to begin the long, arduous task of upgrading your industries, transforming you from a struggling frontier town into a prosperous city. You will never have to fear the monsters around you again, not because we will impose order, but because _you _will be stronger than them. There are wonders you cannot imagine we will show you. We will teach you new methods of agriculture, new methods of industry, and new methods of warfare. We will introduce you to words like rifle, cannon, battery, mortar, Gatling, and maybe, just maybe in your lifetimes you will hear things like plane or even _tank_. These are all _human _words, dreamed up by people on a world where all the monsters had been hunted to extinction long ago and only man's wars against man existed."

Lars then frowned and said, "But do _not _think for one second we will tolerate your abuse of our allies, those whose only crime is that they were born different from you. We judge not on skin or shape, but on action. This world is full of dangers; do not make us amongst them. Think of the future, think of your children. Do you want them standing strong, shoulder to shoulder, the thinks that have hunted you cowering in their holes against them, or do you want them vanished to the mists of history? Choose people of Nesmé, and choose carefully."

* * *

As Lars moved away from his little show, he said to Skuld, "Where are we now?"

"Augmenting with magical fabrication, we can get a major steel foundry up and running within a month. The swamps are apparently littered with rare metals, and now that the trolls have been 'convinced' to stop eating people, we can acquire resources much more easily. Rifle and ammunition production is still worse than what 18th century cottage industry could do, but now that we've settled on a basic design, we can start ramping up quickly. The Kalashnikov I had to make personally just to show off, but if we have a standard pattern for rifle, pistol, and shotgun we can have maybe an army of two thousand with cavalry and artillery support ready in three months, what with the fact that many of the refugees we brought with us from Menzoberranzan were slaves of House Roreril," Skuld said.

"That's good, but what I meant was…" Lars then rounded on Skuld, and picked her up in a tight embrace, their lips locked. At first Skuld was shocked, but she almost instantly melted into it.

Pulling away, Lars said, "I've been at your side for months now and until I had to spend a week without you I didn't realize how much I missed you. I still think you're a bratty, immature bitch, but you're _my _bratty, immature bitch."

Her eyes moist, Skuld said, "And you're a psychotic, soul eating eldritch horror from beyond, but you're _my _eldritch horror from beyond and I now think I have a major tentacle fetish… I've been watching the drow women who came along with us give demonstrations of their erotic arts, just for you."

Lars smiled and said, "You _do _know that I don't really have any sort of physiology that they could exploit in that way, it's all just undifferentiated Warp stuff solidified in this universe's high energy fields."

Skuld scowled and said, "Who said it was for _all_ for you_?_ Now give me a face full of alien feelers."

Unfortunately for Skuld, her enjoyment of having tentacles gently caress her face, eyelids, and throat in soft, sensuous feather touches and one big one jammed half way down her esophagus without touching her uvula was interrupted by a sudden commotion on the far side of the camp.

"_Now _what?" Skuld bitched.

Lars shook his head and tapped her on the nose with a finger before he said, "Wrong attitude lady. The proper attitude," Lars then pulled out his shotgun and chambered a round with a pump, "is _who's next?_"

Rushing over to where the refugees were all retreating, the sight that greeted them was rather bizarre collection of giant, shadowy green spiders stepped out of swirling pools of darkness. There were also smaller ones seemingly made of metal that accompanied them, and some strange ones that were pale and seemed to phase in and out of reality. That wasn't the bizarre part.

The _bizarre _part was the fact that at the centre of the grouping, riding on the largest of the shadowy spiders was a tiny little rabbit-spider thing with a mallet in its mouth.

Then Lars dropped the biggest bombshell when he reported what his senses were telling him.

"They're all female… and they're all _pregnant_… with that System Bug's children," Lars said with a strangely horrified look on his face that was quickly mirrored by Skuld.

The bug then hopped down off it's… well _queen _seemed the right word… and strode over to Lars and Skuld before depositing the hammer thought lost for months at Skuld's feet. It then looked up at them with a stare that _dared _them to turn it against him.

"Holy _fuck_, I think the biggest badass in the group that came over from your universe was the bug!" Lars exclaimed.

Skuld blinked once. Skuld blinked twice. Skuld blinked three times before she picked up the mallet and stashed it away, before giving the bug a little kiss on its rabbit head. Pleased with itself, it hopped away back into its harem and directed them all back into the shadows.

Smiling, Skuld said, "I say we kill Lolth and give the spider part of her portfolio to _him_."

"If he doesn't beat us to the punch," Lars murmured


	54. A day beyond the open door

**Chapter Fifty-three: A day beyond the open door**

Johan had led an interesting life up to this day. At age twelve he had been noticed as having some degree of sorcerous talent and had been recruited by a local mage as an apprentice, only for an orcish tribe to raid his village before he could do anything more than learn a few simple cantrips and thrust him into a long, brutal struggle to survive.

First it had been the orcs, claiming him as a slave for his ability to read the magical writings but never allowed to develop his abilities, instead forced to become a smith for them and improve their implements of war, bending his slight and untrained talents towards the enhancement of what he built for them. It had been a harsh few early years that had turned him to stone, and more than one fellow slave or rival orc who had tried to knife him in the back had taken a hammer blow to the head for the trouble.

Then the orogs had arrived from their holes in the ground, smashing the tribe that held Johan captive and continuing his enslavement. Deep in the darkness Johan had continued to ply his growing skills with metals and pitiful but still present arcane talents, while learning new ways of surviving without the light of the sun.

By the time the drow hit he was practically _used _to being captured and traded about. While he would have traded anything for his freedom and to see his long forgotten friends and family again, he did have to admit that years of servitude had made him practically inured to the hardships he experienced. While the drow liked to sneer at his creations being crude and inelegant, they still had him make weapons for their "slaves", even if he had a sneaking suspicion that several actual drow warriors used them.

At some point in the inscrutable politics of the drow city called Menzoberranzan his owners had needed to rapidly generate a large amount of liquid cash and so they had him and a number of other slaves auctioned off once more.

At that point Johan had come under the ownership of Kirilae, the quiet fourth daughter of an extremely minor house in the city. She had, at one point, been considered for some arcane training but did not pursue it very far before she decided that her true passion lay with learning the ways of the sword. As a skilled swordsmith, Johan had become her personal supplier and repairman while also bringing in a small amount from his work.

At first he had thought her just another spoiled, arrogant bitch of a drow, until the day he had discovered her coming out of a tiny door Johan did not know existed, and neither had it seemed did any other members of the house. Kirilae had held him at sword point until he had feigned ignorance of knowing anything at all, at which point she had surprisingly let him live.

From then on Johan had watched Kirilae carefully, and noticed how she seemed to ignore the cutthroat politics of her family, how she seemed to prefer to distance herself from the blood and killing of the drow world, how she never treated him like a slave unless her family was around, and Johan began to wonder. For two years he observed quietly while going about his business.

Finally the day of decisions arrived when one of Kirilae's older sisters nearly stumbled upon the secret door, only to die in an "unfortunate accident" involving a trip out a nearby window, crashing to ground two floors below where she broke her neck. Only two people saw the truth, Kirilae who had been exiting her hidden place, and Johan, who had shoved the sister out the window just as she discovered Kirilae's secret.

When the questioning had come up, Kirilae said that her sister had tripped on a recently formed crack in the floor, recently because she had plunged her sword into the stone and created it after the fact, and that Johan had tried to do his duty as a slave and save the sister of his master. No one believed this story at face value, but in the way of the drow, no one cared either. They had no reason _not _to believe her version of events, even if everyone else had their own theories.

A week later Kirilae had shown Johan what lay beyond the door. It was a small room, clearly carved out by magic decades ago. In it was a collection of works that probably would have had Kirilae sacrificed on some bloodstained altar for possessing. They were magical treatises written by the surface elves. Kirilae had run across mention of some of their magic years ago and it had become an obsession for her to discover the strange blend of magic and swordplay called blade singing that some of them used.

There were many styles of combining the arcane with martial disciplines, and Kirilae had been cobbling them together with what knowledge she could scrape together on the styles used by the surface elves. It was all heretical in the extreme, but Kirilae had been obsessed with uncovering the mechanics of how it was done since her early days training in wizardry. If her fellow drow would not let her study what she wanted because of what Lolth commanded, then to the Hells with Lolth.

Then, two months after that, while out shopping for supplies, Johan had discovered a sale for weapons being produced in the Roreril compound. The quality of the blades was unsurpassed by anything without magic; the steel carefully tempered and folded with a delicate pattern of water ripples on the surface that belied the incredible strength such things actually spoke of. And yet there were literally dozens of these blades going for half what a lesser weapon might sell for.

Johan immediately purchased a weapon he knew would be perfect for Kirilae to practice with or perhaps even to have enchanted one day. The blade was wicked sharp and to Johan's knowing eye it could easily clash with an adamantine weapon and have a good chance of coming out intact. The steel used techniques Johan did not even know existed in its construction.

Three months later House Roreril and House Oblodra obliterated House Baenre and the city was thrown into chaos as magic began to run amok and the political order tried to sort itself out in the typical drow fashion. Rumours abounded and it seemed that some new goddess had arisen in the midst of the Roreril compound and she intended to leave Menzoberranzan.

Kirilae had come to him, all the worldly possessions she could fit travel with; including the sword Johan had bought her, and asked him simply, "Will you follow me?"

Johan simply picked up his hammer and ran out into the darkness of the city with her. He had been a slave for so long he had nearly forgotten what it meant to be free, so he still wasn't entirely sure if he followed her to escape or simply because he was used to following her orders.

All those years of denigration and pain were worth it the moment he laid his eyes upon the goddess he and Kirilae now worshipped. So much power contained within such a kind body, for she and her consort seemed to love and respect all the creatures that followed them equally. From the noblest of drow down to the lowliest goblin, they truly _cared_ about those that followed their lead.

Now, for the first time in a decade Johan sat under the sun, relishing the burn it caused to his pallid skin while he considered the drawings being distributed to the craftsmen in the camp. As one of the few human crafters Johan could see the potential that the other missed. The elves and dwarves had too many traditions to see past their own noses, while the goblins and orcs were too crude to get what they were looking at.

And for the first time Johan felt like he had been ripped off when he bought the sword for Kirilae. Looking at these drawings, he understood how House Roreril had been able to make so many high quality weapons. They must have been able to make steel nearly as strong as adamantium for coppers with this stuff. And the 'rifles' they had designs for… they didn't have the machinery to make them _yet_, but they knew exactly what they needed to build to get there and they had several skilled mages using magic to assist them.

Johan considered what might have come of his life had he not been captured by the orcs such a very long time ago. He doubted he would be here today, even if he might have more arcane knowledge. But his new goddess had shown him another path to the arcane, another path the mirrored his darkened life. He could _see _how she could bend the shadows to her will, and he tried stretching his will in a similar way. He was sure he would have never have even seen this power had his life not taken the terrible turns it had.

He also grinned at the fact that he very much doubted that he would have ever had a beautiful drow woman's head lying in his lap, napping in the heat of the sun despite the discomfort it caused her night adapted eyes. Although once again Skuld had come through and crafted hundreds of pairs of 'sunglasses' for all of those with eyes that were sensitive to the blazing sun above. The way Kirilae's face was framed by her glasses and her hair, the white tinged with streaks of red like a cloud painted at sunset made Johan grin.

He idly traced a line across her face, feeling the warmth and softness of her dark skin upon his worn, callused fingers, split and burned countless times working the forges. To his amazement though, he discovered a tiny shadow tugged along with his finger when he was at his most blissful.

The shock caused the pool of blackness to snap back into position, making Johan question whether or not he had actually seen it, but he was sure. Moving some of the tools around on the table he had set up to review the schematics he had been given, he created a little pool of darkness to experiment with.

Placing a finger in it, he tried to recapture his thoughts when he had moved the shadows. He remembered feeling so utterly at peace with the world and how much he loved his unlikely companion. At first nothing happened, until he had a philosophical burst of insight. Shadows were delicate, ephemeral things. If he wished to coax them, he would have to show equal subtlety. The shadows were a thing of Skuld.

Johan remembered how much he loved Skuld for getting him and Kirilae out of the slow, grinding death of Menzoberranzan. He remembered how much he loved finding that dark hole where Kirilae practiced her forbidden arts. He realized just how much he loved the shadows and what they had given him, and let little flickers of that love dance out upon his finger tips.

He brought his finger out of the pool of shadow he had created with his tools and he created a tiny smudge of inky blackness where no darkness should be able to manifest.

Controlling his emotions, Johan carefully fed his appreciation back through his fingers, letting out tiny drips of emotion so as to not frighten the carefully constructed image. He loved the shadows, and they loved him back for his appreciation of them.

Pulling his finger up, he drew a line of shade in the air, a strange construct of two dimensions in three. Eventually the shadows fizzled away in the brilliance of the midday sun during Flamerule, but light and dark had to give way to each other in turn. Johan did not hate the light for banishing the dark any more than he hated the dark for concealing the light.

Placing his hand back into his little starter pool, Johan pulled out an enormous globe of darkness and whispered to it with his mind, asking it to show him what it could do. Ever so slowly the darkness began to flow down his arm like rivulets of blackest ink, forming into a solid layer of night between him and the world. Some of it remained about his hand, while the rest enveloped his body like solid armour. He moved the shield of shade to the table and was amazed when it was physically moved by the touch of shadow.

Crying out with giddy joy, at this achievement, Johan woke Kirilae with his exuberance. Looking up at him with her red eyes glowing behind her glasses like sultry coals, she asked, "What is it dear?"

Johan's heart nearly stopped when he realized that she had just called him 'dear' so freely and casually. Grinning, he held up the shield about his hand and gestured to the flickering darkness about him and said, "I think I just figured out how to touch Lady Skuld's Shadow Weave."

Kirilae blinked at that pronouncement before she grinned and said, "I knew you were clever, for a human, but I never expected this."

Johan's smile beamed as he stared down into Kirilae's face and he said, "I have you to thank. It was my staring at your face and realizing just how much I loved you while I was at peace that led me to this discovery. The shadows respond to subtle emotional cues, and if you show them peace and appreciation, they will flow."

Something indistinct moved across Kirilae's face for a moment before she smiled again and said, "That's fantastic Johan!"

Somehow though Johan didn't feel that Kirilae entirely meant it.

She then settled her head back into his lap and shut her eyes, murmuring, "Wake me when the sun has set."

Stroking a hand through her hair, Johan said, "Of course."

Later than night, even though Johan was feeling exhausted from staying awake all day and picking up a nasty burn, he followed Kirilae into a clearing just outside the camp. Strangely she was wearing the clothing she had worn during the escape from Menzoberranzan, an ornate noble's outfit she had put on to help deflect attention from the paranoid members of the city as they made their way to the Roreril compound. She also had the sword Johan had bought for her, the one made by Skuld before he knew the name of their goddess. The once fancy clothing only retained a fraction of their finery after the escape from Lolth, and she had not worn them since arriving on the surface.

Backing him up next to a tree, she kissed him on the cheek and with a strange smile said, "Please don't interfere, I have to do this for myself."

Frowning at the odd statement, Johan watched as Kirilae stepped out into the clearing and held her sword high.

"Spiders who dwell in shadow, hear my call. The Spider Queen has long had claim to my soul by the simple fact of my birth, but she is not my goddess, and she is not your queen. So come, strip away the finery made in her name, strip away the chains on my soul so that I might worship she who commands the shadows more fully, so that I might love without restraint. I am drow! Fight me!" Kirilae cried out to the open air.

For a long moment there was silence, dead and calm, only the sound of breathing audible. But then a patch of darkness seemed to grow darker and a giant shape loomed out of the gloom. It was one of the shadow spiders that had briefly shown up the day before to return an artefact to Skuld. And along with it came a pair of sword spiders riding on its back.

Hopping down, the blade legged arachnids circled carefully about Kirilae. Johan wanted to rush out and help, but her words compelled him to stay. For the briefest of moments she glanced back at him and smiled. His love for her had led him to his discovery. Perhaps her love for him would lead her to her own discovery.

If he could lead her to what she had sought for so long then it would be worth it to stand here and watch.

The sword spiders reached out tentatively and their legs were swatted aside by a lazy parry. Despite flanking her, neither spider could land a blow on Kirilae as she blocked and dodged their strikes with equal skill and grace. Johan watched in awe as the combat sped up, Kirilae effortlessly keeping up with the tempo as four legs on each spider flashed out at her and she danced about them while the enormous shadow spider watched on in silence. The crash of blade upon blade transformed into a symphony, and Johan thought he could hear a soft feminine voice accompanying the truly martial music.

Johan had no idea how smart these creatures were _supposed _to be, but these were clearly exceptional examples.

Then Kirilae took a glancing strike from one of the blades. Not enough to draw blood, but it did cut her clothing. This only seemed to inspire her more, as she began to practically blur with motion as she engaged the spiders. It took a moment for Johan to realize that she had formed a spell with her motions, with her intricate blade dance.

She had figured out the blade art she had sought for so many decades!

And yet it was not enough, for the spiders continued to strike her, seemingly nicking her a dozen times with every frantic heartbeat. Her clothing was utterly shredded and it began to litter the ground about the battlefield.

Then, without warning, the dance came to an end, Kirilae standing naked, her sword held at a high guard above her head, every beautiful curve of her taut body on display, her bare breasts heaving up and down with every deep breath she took to refill her lungs after her exertion. A fine layer of sweat shone in the starlight, making her body glisten like Skuld's wondrous hair. She stood before the shadow spider, staring up into its cluster of beady black eyes proudly.

The back legs of spider began to work, drawing forth ropes of blackness from its spinnerets that it then began to weave into something that it threw over Kirilae. Strands of oily shadow wrapped about the elf's lithe body, cloaking in shadow before Johan's very eyes. It was the reward for her beautiful sword dance in the eyes of the strange creature.

The sword spiders leapt back on top of the larger shadow spider and followed it back into the Plane of Shadow.

Rushing over to Kirilae, Johan embraced her tightly while tears of joy streamed down his face. "That was incredible!" He cried out ecstatically.

Exhaling, Kirilae said, "I honestly had no idea if they could be reasoned with like that, but I saw what happened yesterday and I knew that only from those spiders would I find salvation from the Spider Queen. They are not _her _subjects, and never will be. If they owe any fealty to a being beyond that creature that leads them, it is to the Goddess of Shade."

She plucked at the shadow silk that now draped her body and smiled. "For a long time I have wondered if perhaps Eilistraee was trying to reach me through my hidden research, but even if she was, I pledge my soul to Skuld. We are creatures of shadow you and I, and I am glad it is this way."

Kissing her, Johan said, "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Pulling him tight and demonstrating with her closeness just how thin the silk adorning her body was, Kirilae ask, "I am an elf and you are a human. I will outlive you and any children we might have, barring violence. I doubt I will truly ever comprehend all those little human things that you have been getting so excited about recently. But would you swear to love me for the rest of our lives before the goddess?"

"Of course," Johan replied, tears in his eyes. Remembering the words of the gods, Johan said, "I would swear before the goddess to be true and faithful to you for the rest of my life, and beyond. I would seek you out in the afterlife, would wait for our souls to reunite so that we might remain together until the stars lay down their burdens and we are no more."

Crying now herself, Kirilae said, "I too would swear before the goddess to be true and faithful to you for the rest of my life, and beyond. I would seek you out in the afterlife, would wait for our souls to reunite so that we might remain together until the stars lay down their burdens and we are no more. I cannot see any man ever replacing you despite your short life. You burn so brightly, if briefly."

"The brighter the light, the deeper the shadows," Johan retorted before their lips met once more.


	55. Mask Dance

**Chapter Fifty-four: Mask Dance**

The last week had been frustrating for Captain Rong. Living in this realm was like trying to breathe on top of a tall mountain where the air was _just _thick enough to sustain life. And with Arya dormant to keep the both of them alive, it was like having half her brain lobotomized. The smarter, more experienced half too.

Thus she was working out her frustrations in the cool, intricate motions of a Tzintchian mask dance, the highest form of art that did not involve toppling empires. In a mask dance, the only thing 'worn' was a mask, in that the only thing the audience should never see is the face of the dancer. Elaborate costumes, fans, ribbons, and other props were used, and the mask was often changed, but the face of the dancer was never to be seen.

The objective, of course, was to scare the _fuck _out of the audience. Each routine was carefully constructed to confuse and disorient watchers into believing something that wasn't real via forced perspectives and the use of distracting props, very much like the sleight of hand magicians of a previous era. Psychic abilities were prohibited, only careful choreography, whatever the dancer or dancers brought to the stage and old fashioned deception.

The climax of the dance arrived with the 'fright', some act that terrified those watching. The simplest dances ended with the audience watching one part of the stage certain that the dancer was there and then the dancer would emerge somewhere else and shout some variation of 'Boo!' to startle the audience. More complex ones used the motion to form unsettling philosophical questions in the mind and then at the climax pose a terrifying answer.

There were also instances of a Tzintchian duel ending with the dancer emerging to somehow attack the rival duellist in the audience. Dozens of documented cases ended with death for the unsuspecting target, making the performances all the more exciting as there was real danger to watching the performance. Rong herself had used a war fan to slit the throat of a teacher back in her academy days, thus earning her an automatic pass with top honours in that course.

She moved in a field of spinning frames draped with long robes and set with masks and holders for brightly coloured fans and shining swords. The frames were set on rollers as well, so every time she moved one she created an intricate pattern of motion. It was a practical example of chaos theory as the basic Brownian motion of the system was also influenced by the spinning arms colliding with each other, creating impossibly complex patterns.

Ducking in and out amongst the frames, Rong spun and danced, switching out her current accoutrements for the ones on the frames. One moment she had a fan like a butterfly's wings, a silk blue robe with patterns of swans, and a terracotta mask like a tiger's face, while the next she was wearing a cloak of pleated white cotton, a pair of gleaming bronze daggers, and white plastic mask devoid of features. All of the new items were taken from different frames.

The story Rong told in the motion was complex and multilayered. Perhaps an Eldar might have been capable of properly understanding the degree of subtleties, but there were dozens of sub-patterns and stories constructed in the overall dance. The overall theme was a questioning of the planned war with the C'tan, leading the audience to wonder if the looming conflict was worth it.

With a sudden crash, the carefully constructed chaos of motion Rong had constructed came to a halt as the spinning, moving frames all collided, their carefully tended motions finally coming to an end as they all locked up and some were knocked to the ground. The audience had their horrific conclusion.

Chaos was unsustainable.

Removing her mask, Rong looked about at the tumble and smiled. She was the only one in the room.

She had her answer as to what to do about the Praxis.

* * *

The crew of the _Galactica _had been quiet about the latest bout of 'cooperation' the _Stiletto _had offered recently. Their captain had made some tactical demands of the Colonials in dealing with this new threat. They explained that this area of space had some problems for their engines and thus they were slowly recharging for the next jump out, so they had asked the Colonials to deal with the screaming maniacs, even if they had offered assistance in doing it.

That 'assistance' involved sending over a pair of creepy guys in concealing robes carrying long staffs with weird eight pointed stars made from brass on the tops as 'sensors and communications experts', and one 'close-quarters combat specialist'. The latter was requested to stay in his assigned quarters unless they had a mission as he quite frankly scared everyone who saw him. When he walked his massive boots shook the deck and the _human skulls _he had tied to his armour clanked and rattled about. If it weren't for the fact that he kept his helmet off when not in combat he would have easily been mistaken for some sort of Cylon war robot in his blood red mechanical armour.

Talking with them was hard as none of them knew any of the Colonial languages and the device they used as a translator was back aboard their ship so they needed to be in radio contact with the _Stiletto_, but very few actually wanted to talk to them. When not in their assigned quarters, the two robed… creatures… spent most of their time on the bridge inputting targeting data and jump points, while the giant stood protectively over them or, during the two military manoeuvres they had performed so far to shut up the raving lunatics at the listening outpost, he had led the attack.

None who had seen him in battle questioned why the Cylons had run screaming when they had tried to board the _Stiletto_. He was a monster in battle, although surprisingly gentle with the unarmed. He however accepted no quarter. Once you picked up arms against him the only conclusion was death. If you surrendered right away, he secured you but otherwise did no harm.

Fortunately for the crews of the listening post, there weren't many weapons, except for ugly knives wielded by their officers, so only the guys at the top actually died, although their severed heads had been quickly stuck onto spikes on the baroque armour of the giant.

The Colonials did not like fighting with him as the roars of his war cries or his oversized gun or his _chainsaw axe _terrified them, but they had let him accompany them on the mission to the second outpost because they were more terrified of having him as an enemy than as a friend.

Other demands that had been made included the Raptors performing the op to take a very bizarre and precise route to the outposts. Instead of just jumping right to the outposts, they had been asked to make a series of smaller jumps such that the light cone of the craft _just_ caught up to the new position before jumping again. They also asked that they only move in straight lines on these micro-jumps and take paths around any space debris instead of bypassing 'through' them. It was a strain to the systems, but the _Stiletto _had offered fuel to make up for the inefficiency of lots of jumps one after another and had been quite adamant that it be done the way they wanted or they wouldn't help out with the operation.

There had also been the demand that the outposts be struck one after the other instead of a simultaneous mission. Only Adama was old and cagey enough to see what the captain of the _Stiletto _might have been doing.

These people claimed that they knew everything and that the Colonials and the _Stiletto _would submit to the 'Praxis', which apparently _wasn't _their god despite talking about it like it was, while simultaneously not knowing about FTL drives. Any civilization that had access to FTL would quickly understand that they _didn't _have a dozen contacts on their screen. In fact, Colonial and Cylon targeting systems were capable of automatically filtering such 'light echo' noise. An STL civilization on the other hand…

Adama figured that the _Stiletto _wanted to feed potential enemies information that was completely and utterly _wrong _now while they controlled the battlefield and information flow so as to shape actions later if it came down to a fight. As it was, the enemy would think their FTL only marginally faster than the speed of light and required regular stops to function, and that it could not pass through large masses.

With the contribution of fuel, Adama had allowed their demands to be met. Their captain was a sneaky bitch and he rather hoped he wouldn't end up moved about like some game piece on a board as well. Although he had a sneaking suspicion the plan had been constructed so that _he _would understand it and thus approve.

What sort of culture would produce such a twisted, devious little mind?

Looking over the interrogation logs from his own people, he had not been privy to the logs from the _Stiletto _as he had not asked, fearing what an 'interrogation' from them would look like, Adama also wondered what sort of culture could produce the people… and _things _they had found. The _Stiletto _was alien, but it was filled with strange humans rather than the creatures they had found out there.

Although Adama had to admit that even the humans they had discovered were alien. The _Stiletto _had provided translator aid, and what they got was… creepy. Every last member of the captured crews were fanatics, not all to the same degree but fanatics nonetheless, and they either refused to acknowledge that they might know about something as simple as artificial gravity or they proclaimed its existence an affront to the Praxis. Apparently to them, everything was already known, and thus if they didn't know about it, it was obviously forbidden.

One of the hooded creatures from the _Stiletto _hissed something and then the radio crackled with the translation, "Incoming enemy fleet through the spinward wormhole."

* * *

The fleet had been hastily assembled, by Praxis standards, in only a few days, elements of the local sector defence split off and merged with a task force deployed from Zanshaa to confront this new occurrence. At first their listening post had reported the discovery of a new space faring species, the worst case scenario for first contact. That alone demanded a reaction, especially since it was initially believed that the enemy was capable of constructing generation or sleeper ships, both of which required technologies banned by the Praxis.

Then they started noticing the anomalies. The data sent over showed that the speech patterns of the new creatures all fell _exactly _within the range of vocalization allowed by Terrans. That in itself was not particularly unusual, but there was further evidence that something was extremely anomalous. Because when further data was sent by those of the listening posts, it was noted that the ships had patterns possibly indicative of writing on them. Preliminary code analysis had been successful at deciphering the writing, _because they had the languages on file._

The majority of the ships had writing based off of an ancient Terran language known as 'Greek' while the largest of the ships had writing in something called 'English', tongues and alphabets dead for centuries since the conquest of Terra.

The wormholes were situated far from Terra both in physical space and in the network, but with the flexibility of time and space across the wormholes, there was the _possibility _that perhaps despite the fact that they shouldn't have had access to the necessary technology, pre-Praxis Terrans had somehow sent out an interstellar mission and established a colony somewhere the Shaa had missed.

Or _colonies _as analysis showed very different cultures had built the ships, especially the two largest ones. The biggest was in fact quite worrying due to the strong cultish leaning of the decoration. The Terrans were known for their freakish adherence to a huge number of cults before being brought into the Praxis, and if that disease had festered for centuries or longer unchecked… it made the officers shudder at the vile implications.

The flotilla dispatched was rather large considering the size and number of enemy ships, consisting of fourteen light frigates, six cruisers, three heavy cruisers, and the bombardment ship _Bombardment of Delhi_ as the flag of the entire operation. There were some uncomfortable with sending Terrans against an enemy that was quite possibly Terran as well, but the officers had insisted they be given the honour of redeeming their species name if it were the case that this was an offshoot.

Then some truly unsettling information had arisen with the loss of the listening posts. They had been given the demand to "Cease your prattling on about the Praxis or we will do it for you forcibly" and when the officers of the outposts had refused to allow their offensive presence to go uncommented on, the attack had begun.

And it was revealed that the enemy hadn't been exactly lying about the possession of FTL drives, something that the Shaa said was impossible. Their smaller ships were capable of going about zero point one percent slower than the speed of light through a series of straight line, discontinuous movements, although it appeared they could not move through massive bodies.

The full might of the Praxis was being mustered against this… the closest word would have been 'blasphemous' if it had existed in their vocabulary… _terrible _foe, but for now the flotilla already headed there would see about destroying or at least driving off this current fleet while the rest would be used to discover and annihilate their homeworld.

The tacticians of the Praxis were racking their brains as to how to combat these monsters from outside the purity of the Praxis. So far the larger ships had not moved, and the first transmission had spoken of 'recharging our drives' so it seemed that only their smaller ships could move faster than light on a tactical level, and they seemed locked into a course once set and could not change direction.

Analysis suggested leaving the point defence anti-proton lasers on manual operation as the computers would lock on to the more distant but no longer present images first and thus miss quite spectacularly if allowed to fire automatically. Fortunately it appeared that the enemy did not have the precision to get their end points within better than a half light second, which would give plenty of time to lock on to any missiles fired. The ships were too small to do any damage with anything less than missiles.

"Entering system 7-53 now sir," the navigation officer aboard the _Bombardment of Delhi _reported. The ships of the flotilla streamed out of the wormhole into the mostly abandoned star system. The outpost that should have launched asteroids through to balance the mass and keep the wormhole stable was quiet, indicating just how barbaric these creatures were that they would risk the stability of the wormholes with their actions.

Commodore Helsinki watched the displays carefully while maintaining his high G breathing exercises. They were currently accelerating at a stately 2Gs, which while somewhat suffocating was not excessively dangerous and a reasonable acceleration rate going into a potentially hostile zone.

A flurry of reports reached Helsinki's ears as telemetry was reported. The enemy formation remained under no acceleration and was several light minutes away, just sitting there.

Helsinki considered his options for a time before he announced, "Begin launching pinnaces and anti-matter missiles. We have no need to talk with these barbarians."

* * *

Upon her command throne, Rong watched as data was put on the screen. While true that they had attacked first, they had _politely _asked the guys to just shut up and stop hurling threats at them for several days before finally issuing their ultimatum. Even the Colonials had wanted to launch an attack before Rong lost her patience.

"Analysis suggests antimatter missiles as the _only _weapon on all but the four largest ships, with anti-proton lasers as point defences on the four biggest ones," Ichiro reported, his own daemon having gone dormant a day after Arya. He then grimaced and said, "Also, the translator has figured out the names of some of the ships, including the probable flagship. It's called the _Bombardment of Delhi_."

Arya had been born in Delhi.

There was silence for a long moment before Rong said, "We knew from interrogations that humans were incorporated into this _foul _Praxis, but that is just crass. Crew?"

"Humans," Faust replied with a grimace.

Rubbing her forehead, Rong said, "Oh _come on! _Alright, I want that ship's name plate as a trophy for when Arya wakes up and the skulls and viscera of the crew dedicated to Asukhon. Cripple the fuckers, don't kill them. We'll send a message."

* * *

Adama watched as the information was transmitted over to the _Galactica. _The plan was… subtle yet straightforward, elegant yet brutal. The _Stiletto _would sit behind and use its FTL sensor and comm. gear to snipe out the incoming missiles and shield the fleet while keeping its true firepower in reserve, while the _Galactica _used its own FTL drive to dance around the enemy. Against a foe like the Cylons it would never work, and as it was it would strain their drives to spin them up fast enough, but the tactics were based off the Adama Manoeuvre, so it would work.

The basic plan was to jump in, deploy Vipers and take some shots with the _Galactica's _main guns at the biggest ship before jumping out nearly as quickly as the drive could spin up before jumping around the battlefield to harass the smaller ships. Apparently these nutcases used antimatter weapons, a technology the Colonials didn't possess because they had cheaper, more stable fuels that wouldn't destroy the ship on a lucky hit. Who strapped a bomb to their frakking asses like that?

Leaning over the DRADIS display, Adama ordered, "On my mark, jump."

* * *

The entire command deck rocked as high velocity, high explosive armour piercing rounds penetrated the _Bombardment of Delhi_, ripping into its hull like high calibre bullets against cardboard. The ships were armoured against things like space debris impacts, not kinetic weapons. The crushing sensation of forward motion ceased, leaving the crew to drift in zero gravity.

"Report!" Helsinki screamed.

"Enemy ship appeared _ten kilometres _off our port side and opened fire with high impulse _chemically_ propelled weapons. Port sensors are offline and the engines were forced into shutdown by hull breeches too close to the secondary antimatter tanks," the tactical officer reported in a near panic.

"Target with anti-proton lasers!" Helsinki barked furiously.

"Sir, all missiles and pinnaces destroyed by enemy weapons fire half way to target… weapons used appear to be relativistic particle beams and lasers…" the weapons officer replied in confusion. There was a delay of nearly a minute between firing and impact at that range. It should be impossible to _track _the tiny, rapidly accelerating missiles at that range with weapons like that. Light didn't move… that… fast…?

Helsinki had the sinking feeling of being suckered.

"Unable to target enemy ship as it left us with a blind spot and it just disappeared," the tactical officer said in a voice that said he fully expected to get his throat cut.

"Sir, _Pride of Naxus _reports they are under attack and that…" the communication officer was cut off by a sudden massive red warning triangle appearing on the tactical display screen.

"Low yield probable fission/fusion warhead impacted _Pride of Naxus _in the drive engine. It is currently leaking antimatter. Emergency venting occurring but containment loss imminent," the tactical officer explained.

Helsinki watched as the battle unfolded. The _Bombardment of Delhi _was blinded on one side and was relying on the frigates around her to provide sensor data for the port side, and with the heavy cruiser _Pride of Naxus _for all intents and purposes destroyed, that reduced their close range point defence capacities by about 15%.

The ship rocked again, more violently this time, rattling the weightless command crew in their restraints.

"Enemy _fighters?_" The tactical officer asked rhetorically from his computer in confusion. He then reported, "Containment lost for primary starboard anti-proton laser array. Single seat craft armed with kinetic energy weapons are currently ripping apart our defences. They're hugging our hull us and staying inside our defensive perimeter. We can't target them."

"_Vigilance _destroyed," the sensor officer announced, the tactical display showing that cursed ship had just jumped within range and punctured the light cruiser's missile racks with its freakishly primitive guns, shattering the matrices of anti-hydrogen snowflakes, cooking off the weapons and turning the ship to monatomic gas before jumping away.

The entire flotilla was disintegrating. The abominable enemy ship was capable of moving faster than proper communication would allow, thus turning the tight command structure of all Praxis formations into chaotic shambles. Captains expecting orders from their superiors were panicking and freezing. Helsinki had frozen! They weren't used to fighting like this!

"By the Shaa! _Terminus _just destroyed by _Superior!_" The tactical officer practically gurgled in terror.

"_Superior _is one of _ours!_" Helsinki screamed.

"_Superior _auto-targeted the enemy ship with its anti-proton laser but it jumped out before the beam arrived and it struck the _Terminus _by mistake," the officer reported in horror.

Helsinki would have the throat of the _Superior's _captain for this! The man had always been a hot headed, trigger happy idiot and to turn the auto-targetters on without permission was just the sort of insolence he would pull!

Helsinki wracked his brain for any sort of tactic he had learned at the academy, but Praxis doctrine had never accounted for enemies capable of moving from one point to another faster than light without moving through the intervening space! He panicked.

"Starburst! Starburst!" Helsinki ordered. "We need to open up space in the formation so we can engage our defences without risking hitting each other."

With only three ships capable of close in fighting, and one rapidly having its point defences ripped to shreds by ridiculous single seat fighters, they needed to maximize their ability to hit things, and that meant antimatter missiles from the lighter warships. But in this close formation they wouldn't be able to use them without irradiating other ships in the explosions.

It was ultimately the _worst _move Helsinki could have made as once they starburst and broke up the tight formation, every ship was on its own and all possibility of mutual support ceased to exist and the ability to coordinate defences was impossible. Moving out to long range wouldn't stop the _Galactica _from jumping in at point blank range and pounding a warship, only now Adama could take his time instead of having to keep skipping about to avoid the other ships in the formation from shooting at him.

Unfortunately, in the rigid hierarchy of the Praxis, no one questioned Helsinki's judgement and the ships started immediately burning their drives as quickly as possible to break up the formation randomly.

Then the _Executor_, Helsinki's third heavy cruiser, mysteriously exploded, along with one of his frigates. Something had ripped across the solar system and cut the heavy cruiser in half, cooking off its fuel, before puncturing the ship four light seconds behind it.

The sensors officer blinked a few times while looking at his screen before he timidly replied, "Sensors indicate a high intensity laser from the last reported vector-location of the largest enemy ship is responsible."

Helsinki's jaw dropped. There was a _three minute delay! _They had only started the starburst four minutes ago. The enemy ship would have had to have known what they were going to do before they did it! The laws of physics explicitly forbade that sort of thing. Not even FTL drives approached that level of impossibility.

Especially since there was still a cloud of plasma from the initial wave of missiles that blocked line of sight between the two fleets.

Within his acceleration and vacuum suit, Helsinki quietly relieved himself into the provided receptacle. Everything was going wrong.

* * *

Hakim sat quietly in the payload compartment of his assigned Thunderhawk. His squad was assigned to capture the bridge crew, their psychic abilities giving them the edge they needed to get living members, while the faster Whips and Reavers would capture the engines and weapons so that no one could be stupid enough to try and cook off the antimatter. The fact that both those chapters were close combat specialists also reduced the danger of a stray round damaging an important containment system.

The Thunderhawks had been loitering within the debris field around the Praxis installation near the wormhole they had been predicted to exit out of for a day now, the Bearers in their teleport Terminator armour kept in reserve. The enemy truly was arrogant to have not done a thorough sweep of the installation for just this sort of attack, although they seemed focused around warship combat, ignoring what a well placed knife in the back could do.

The Colonials were systematically picking apart the enemy formation, although they had already reported that their fuel supplies were reaching critical levels and they would have to retrieve their fighters and return to the fleet or get stranded around lunatics carrying antimatter. It was no matter. They had been expected to last exactly this long, and they had already done an immense amount of damage, breaking up the formation and crippling the ships capable of shooting back without blowing themselves up.

Hakim smiled a sandy smile as the acceleration couches they were in rocked with the impact of the Thunderhawk's nose punching into the side of the disgustingly named _Bombardment of Delhi._

Undoing his straps, Hakim hurled himself out of the artificial gravity environment of the Thunderhawk and into the weightless realm of the primitive ship. Despite using slugthrowers and nukes, the _Galactica _was really more advanced than this hunk of junk. Their FTL systems meant that the only battles that could be fought had to be at point blank range around targets of high importance. At that range, any sort of volatile fuel or weapon was a liability and so they used simpler weapons to avoid every battle turning into a MAD scenario. There was plenty of room for improvement, but their designers hadn't been stupid in their weapon choices.

Landing on a solid surface, Hakim engaged his boot grapples and stuck down while the rest of his squad landed around him. Raising his wrist mounted storm bolter he destroyed a spidery maintenance robot with a small burst of fire before nodding for his men to find a place to get through the inner hull to the actual crew sections.

Finding a likely access hatch, Hakim nodded to two of his brothers to open it. Plunging their force halberds into the air lock, they quickly cut open the metal hatch amidst sparks of psychic energy. They did the same to the inner hatch, explosively decompressing the area beyond. The crew were all in suits just in case of such a loss of atmospheric pressure.

With precognitively precise aiming, the Heralds cut down anyone carrying anything that could possibly be used as a weapon, spraying hot blood all over the compartment.

This was _too _easy.

* * *

Commodore Helsinki watched in mute horror as his ships were one by one picked off by laser fire coming from a point on the other side of the solar system where he could not see. This was the greatest military disaster the Praxis had ever encountered. Not even the war with the Lai-own had ever gone this badly.

Then the decompression alerts started sounding. Something was causing his ship to progressively start loosing air. Watching the displays, he realized that the sections losing air were all aligned such that they would be along the fastest paths to engineering, the arsenal, and the bridge.

How barbaric were these creatures? _Boarders?_

Of course, these abominations could easily get so close that boarding actions actually had a chance of reaching the target… and weapons were kept under strict lock and key aboard a ship and were designed to crush mutinies, not repulse boarders. The only weapons they had were the knives of the officers and the tools of the technicians down in engineering.

Never having anticipated the _possibility _of capture as boarding was impossible and weapons hits tended to obliterate the target rather than cripple them, the Shaa had never installed any convenient methods of scuttling the ship, considering it an unnecessary hazard.

When the crackling blade punched through the hatch to the bridge, Helsinki knew that his time was up. Drawing his ceremonial dagger, he undid his restraints and moved to face these monsters like the Peer he was.

An enormous boot kicked down the dissected door and revealed a creature out of the eldest nightmares of Terra. Three metres tall from the bottom of its boots to the top of its headdress, it was blue and gold and covered in the death cult markings of some ancient Terran emperor. A fully enclosed battle suit, it was the sort of technology that could have only have evolved on the most backwards, brutal of worlds beyond the words of the Shaa and the Praxis. Around its right wrist it had an enormous double barrelled slug thrower, while in its left hand it had a _halberd_, but there was obviously an immense amount of technology in the melee weapon as its wicked blade glowed with unnatural light.

Stepping in to the command chamber on the "ceiling" from the point of view of the orientation of the acceleration couches, the abomination looked about with brightly glowing optical sensors. Helsinki felt that if every citizen of the Praxis were to be in his position, no matter how many iterations of this scenario were played out the end would always be the same.

He pushed off the nearest surface and charged with his knife.

The giant casually caught his arm and shattered his forearm in its iron grip. Helsinki screamed inside his suit before he blacked out.

* * *

Rong smiled as her mask dance reached its climax. The _Bombardment of Delhi _was theirs… as was its communications gear and the protocols in her captain's head. An encrypted message could be sent straight to their capital and no one would stop it. An encrypted message from a trusted source that would _never _think of attaching a semi-sentient self-replicating adaptive virus with the only purpose being to spread itself and to hijack every available communications channel and deliver a simple message.

The rechristened _Revenge of Delhi _drifted in open space, the new name drawn with the headless corpses of the crew in Sanskrit. It would broadcast its message daily until destroyed, passing it on to a different network node each time. Given communication times, within about a month the entire empire was likely to have every computer infested with the bug.

It was time to deliver the 'fright' of this performance. They had already attached the impassionate tactical data, but there was also a more important message to send.

Rong picked up her daemon sword, the ethereal flicker about it dulled by the low energy of this universe but still clearly present. She then walked in front of the kneeling Commodore Helsinki, all of his pride stripped from him.

Chaos _was _unsustainable, but that was because it kept reinventing itself into new forms. That was the truth and the lie within her dance to herself. This would spread chaos far and wide in this universe. Billions would likely die in the infighting, but Rong did not particularly care. They had threatened those under her care repeatedly and then opened fire without demanding an explanation or even asking if the captured crews were still alive. By her books, these hidebound bastards had it coming.

Smiling her most daemonic smile in her currently diminished state, she said to the camera in the language of the Praxis, "Greetings, I am Rong Xun, captain of the _Stiletto_, and I would just like to say that I don't particularly like your Praxis. It's so very _limited_. I mean, if you are seeing this now it is showing how pathetic your computer science is. Although I hear that you detest AIs, so perhaps you should destroy whatever is broadcasting this message right now as our little program is a simple AI by our standards. Of course, that will serve my purposes of destroying your culture pretty effectively as you dismantle your own telecommunications networks. So maybe you should keep listening.

"The Praxis is _weak._ Your doctrine claims that you already know everything and forbids things that you disagree with. Well you _know nothing_, as evidenced by the fact that your Peer here is at my feet, taken off his ship by our boarding parties. The universe is so much vaster than you comprehend, and it is pathetic your pretending at knowledge. You are limited, short sighted, and beneath us. We have other business to tend to, but _when _we return we will sweep you away, of that I can guarantee. Don't you agree commodore?" Rong asked, causing Helsinki to lift his head.

And reveal the Chaos star cut into his forehead.

"My soul to Chaos! All glory to the gods!" Helsinki cried out just before Rong's daemon sword descended, separating his head from his shoulders. But even as his body slumped to the ground, pumping out spurts of blood as his heart tried to realize that he was dead, his soul remained visible, drawn into the daemon sword.

Grinning, Rong said, "As you can see, despite the lies you have been fed, there _is _an afterlife, and we control it. All those Shaa who committed suicide? Yeah, _we're _waiting. I hope the few of you still alive remember that next time you think about ending your boredom. Because we're _exciting!_"

The camera clicked off and the message was encoded. In ten minutes the first transmission from the _Revenge of Delhi _would be on its way. In perhaps a week the broadcasts would start. In two weeks, probably ahead of the news of the destruction of social order across the empire, a much bigger fleet would arrive.

In two hours the _Stiletto _and the Colonials would jump away to another universe.

Rong grinned. It would be _fun _to watch the lovely chaos spread, but she had other obligations.


	56. Homecoming

**Chapter Fifty-five: Homecoming**

Rong-Arya sat on the edge of their seat, watching the emotionless display count down the time to re-emergence back into real-space. Once they had figured out that when transitioning between universes they tended to slide down the slight distortions in the spatial curvature picked up by their Warp engines in spaces without native Warp activity near intelligent beings, they figured out how to compensate and drop out in the middle of deep space far from any thinking minds.

They still accidentally ran into a fleet of sleeper ships travelling at low relativistic speeds the immediately after transitioning into real-space after the first jump out of that Praxis dominated universe, but by the same strange luck that affected Chaos, the fleet had been fairly spread out and only one ship had actually collided with anything, and that had been prow first with the _Stiletto_, so no serious damage had been done to the ship.

The other guys… not so much. The crew of the _Stiletto _had immediately attempted to apologize, but there was so much panic in the aftermath of a ship slamming into another at .5c and only one of them being destroyed that the rest of the foreign fleet had just sort of broken up and scattered, burning their primitive fusion torches as hard as their ships could handle to escape from the strange encounter.

They only stayed for about three days to recharge their drives before jumping out again, watching the ships starting a hard burn to try and regroup after scattering. It would probably take them a month or two to get back in order, and they had burned a lot of reaction mass so they would probably have to take things slower than they had intended. All attempts at contacting them after that had been given up in exasperation. They could easily catch up with the poor bastards, but they seemed terrified and unwilling to reciprocate to attempts at establishing communication protocols. Finally Rong-Arya just dropped off a high powered communication buoy with translation protocols with a sincere apology and some technical data on improved computing, fusion, laser and superconductor technology as a sign of showing that they were sorry. The target was pointed at their most likely destination, a yellow star know quite well to the crew of the _Stiletto _but that was quite unknown to the Colonials, and kept that way.

After they left, Fleetlord Atvar managed to get his conquest fleet back in order after the rather strange encounter that the few members of the Race awake to witness it had tried to explain. Eventually, once everything was back in order minus the loss of the ship carrying 80% of their explosive metal bombs, it was decided to carry on to Tosev 3. They would need to get there to refuel anyway, and that explosive metal bombs would be unnecessary for the conquest of the Tosevites there.

Ignoring the strange transmission from the location of the collision, they accepted that they would be approximately twenty cycles behind schedule and sent a report to Home in an attempt to explain to the Emperor that something had gone slightly wrong for no explainable reason but that the conquest was still underway.

Meanwhile, on a pale blue orb approximately five light years away, an alien signal was picked up as international tensions began to rise. The eruption of a war took away from much of the research going into figuring out what the repeating signal they kept picking up on their newly invented radios meant, but by the end of it, the two remaining power blocks had started to figure out many of the bits and pieces being sent to them, paranoia and mistrust urging them onward to figure out the secrets being sent to them before their foes could learn the same and gain an advantage. There was also the fear that the things that lurked beyond the stars would show up and have less than benevolent intentions so also turned their attentions outwards.

Thus as the conquest fleet entered the Tosev system they discovered that their braking burns had been noticed and they were being asked to identify themselves _immediately_.

Rong-Arya, despite being a humanist, would have winced at the long term impact of what happened. The collision had been an _accident! _The new philosophies of Chaos only called for _intentional _malevolence against those who _deserved _it. Trying to conquer Earth in another universe was not call for a crusade. In fact, in balance, it was the _worst _apology in the multiverse in that most apologies do not arm the enemies of the one being apologized to.

However, Rong-Arya did not know about this as that was still in the future from their perspective, and the more immediate future of actually returning home after a year long mission followed by weeks of slogging through the Doldrums with massive damage to their systems from their initial displacement held their more immediate attention.

The universe folded open, vomiting the _Stiletto _and her charges back into reality in an achingly familiar star system. Yellow main sequence star, eight planets, a bunch of dwarf planets along with plenty of stellar debris. And radio chatter. It was all coded and unless you had the proper equipment it sounded like background noise, but Lieutenant O'Hare grinned as he began to patch into all sorts of queries.

"Ma'am, Earth has contacted us and sends congratulations on getting home," O'Hare replied with a grin. That was met with general cheering all throughout the bridge that quickly spread throughout the ship as the rumours and sounds of jubilation spread at the speed of sound.

"Send our thanks and apologizes for a tardy return. We got a little side-tracked," Rong-Arya replied.

O'Hare nodded before he frowned and said quietly, "They are sending condolences ma'am, in that while they always expected us to return, we're have ah… twelve years on the mission clock."

Rong-Arya's look soured as the cheering died down on the bridge, the guards smart enough to not let this latest batch of news escape into the general population of the ship.

"_Fuck…_" Rong-Arya noted quietly before they asked, "What are my debriefing protocols for the crew."

"Well… they say that this level of temporal disjunction was unexpectedly long, but that theoretically the whole crew should have been prepared for a long deployment and everyone volunteered in spite of their family situations. They did also point out that everyone is going to be paid according to the clocks on Earth instead of the ones on the _Stiletto_, so… yeah," O'Hare reported weakly, feeling the emotional kick to the gut himself.

Holding the bridge of their nose, Rong-Arya said, "I was expecting to have to only explain things to two out of the three parties involved in the Earth-_Stiletto_-Colonial interactions, not _all three!_"

* * *

Everyone aboard the Colonial fleet watched with interest as they approached the third planet in the system they had been brought to. The last three jumps had been in the middle of deep space, although there had been that weird collision that had lightly irradiated all the ships in the fleet from the spray of debris, but not enough to get through the radiation shielding already present.

The strange thing was that while the first two jumps had caused the stars to shift radically, the last two showed very little change in the relatively positions. The _Stiletto _had been quiet about the questions asked, simply replying that the final stages of manoeuvring were "tricky" so to expect little change.

But they seemed to have made good on their promise to bring them to Earth, if the orbital structures around the pale blue orb were any indication.

"Did you ever think things would end like this when we first set out?" Roslin asked while staring out of a view port to the slowly expanding orb that would be their new home.

"Frak no," Adama replied gruffly. It was so strange to actually _be _here, on Earth, with the Cylon war left behind. _Far _behind. As best they could tell the Twelve Colonies were in a dwarf galaxy orbiting the other side of the one they were currently in. No one would ever find them out here.

"So what do we do now?" Roslin asked. They had a whole world to call home now, but they had never really questioned what they would do if they got there and it already had its own inhabitants. The tales had spoken of a Lost Tribe, but they had been so desperate just to find a safe haven that the step between 'Find Earth' and 'Profit' was filled with question marks.

"We adapt I guess. Hopefully they'll just leave us and our culture alone," Adama replied. "They also seem interested in our pilots and shipbuilding, so at least some of us won't want for jobs."

Roslin smiled slightly and said, "There's always a place for old soldiers and builders, even if no one notices them fading away. It's the politicians who get to go down in a blaze of glory or ignominy."

"There is that," Adama agreed, turning his attention back to the blue marble before them.

* * *

Rong-Arya strode down the halls of the palace, marvelling at how long it had been since they had last seen this place. The eldritch architecture, the academy students racing through the halls, the government officials going about their business… it was all so comforting and familiar, and yet different. The palace was ever changing, always in a state of flux as Warp energies caused it to shift or endless renovations took place to alter the gigantic complex bit by bit into something different from what it once was. Twelve years had done a lot to change it.

Entering the throne room, Rong-Arya found the thrones of the goddesses vacant, leaving only Tzintchi to lounge, his fingers bridged in front of his chest while his human face wore a blank, slightly amused expression. Rong-Arya considered the almost empty throne room before they asked, "Did we screw up that bad?"

"Nah, it's just that there were a lot of mothers aboard the _Stiletto _who were expecting to only a miss a year of their children's lives, not a decade, so the goddesses have gone to help encourage them. As for the courtiers, they're better off elsewhere for the moment. Besides, if I wanted to punish you I would make it public," Tzintchi said amicably before he waved a map of the known multiverse into existence.

"We learned a lot about ship building from the _Stiletto_, although the ship is now considered a bit big for its class and a bit under-armed for its size. We haven't built many more ships, and most of them are actually _Stiletto_-class, but the design was always experimental anyway," Tzintchi said as he descended from his throne.

"She's being decommissioned," Rong-Arya asked with a sinking feeling.

"No, but she is being refit. The _Stiletto _can't handle line action, even if as a frigate she was never actually _meant _to. No, we have other plans for her. While expect a lot of the crew to not sign up for another tour, can't blame them as it took you guys _way _longer to get back than expected," a slight glimmer of what might have been considered guilt flickered over Tzintchi's face, but with the god of schemes 'face-value' had almost no value, "there will be a large contingent that will sign back up, having nothing better to do. And you have some interesting experiences under your belt; in particular your navigators were the first to document the fact that when transitioning to other universes you have a tendency to insert near sentient life unless you are sure to avoid doing that. Very subtle, and we never would have noticed as our other scout ships have been _trying _to drop out near sentient beings."

"You have a new mission for us," Rong-Arya guessed.

"Yes. We do," Tzintchi said, pointing to the centre of the psychic hologram of the multiverse. "We gods have a set of long term objectives that revolve around _this _universe."

"The Central Hub. But that is controlled by some nasty, if enigmatic, entities right now. I'm sure we could take them with a bigger fleet…" Rong-Arya noted before trailing off at Tzintchi waggling a finger.

"We have _one _objective in that place, but the locals, if indifferent to what happens to it within their domain, will get right pissed if we try and snatch it from them," Tzintchi said. "This is why we've manipulated our 'cousins' into heading there." He then pointed to a dark stain next to their universe.

"The temporal mechanics are a bitch, but right now members of the Imperium and the Eldar are making their way to the Central Hub, and more Imperials will follow in their footsteps. Old school Chaos will surely follow shortly after," Tzintchi explained, thin filaments of darkness branching off and heading for the point of light that represented the Central Hub.

"The Central Hub will become a battlefield," Rong-Arya noted.

"It will. The fighting will give us sufficient cover to carry out our operation. Unfortunately, we don't have the fleet weight to stop our relatives if they decide to send a major force. Thus we need a counterbalance, a force capable of fighting on equal or better footing with them in our stead. To this we have decided to establish a base here," Tzintchi pointed to a point of light on the opposite side of the Central Hub, "for the purposes of carrying out operations here," he then pointed out a location somewhat between their own universe and the new base, but closer to the Central Hub, if in a calmer branch of realities.

"The locals of the target universe have access to a wide variety of psychic abilities and high energy resources, making them uniquely suited to fighting factions such as the Imperium or Chaos. Operational goals are to lead them to the Central Hub _without _leading them to our base of operations or _here_. If we time it right we can crash them into our psychotic brethren right in time to snatch our objective in the ensuing mayhem," Tzintchi explained.

"Clever sir, but I get the feeling this is above my pay grade," Rong-Arya asked.

"It is a _touch _above your command authority _commodore_, but there are other factors at work here," Tzintchi said with a grin.

Nodding, Rong-Arya said, "Of course. I don't pretend to understand, but I perceive what you mean."

"Specifically, the biggest reason for telling you this without having anyone else around is that you will be part of the spearhead. The _Stiletto _will become our primary snatch and grab ship. We can't remove the pulsar lance, but a lot of the smaller guns will be stripped off and the cargo and landing bays will be expanded. With the technology recovered from the Colonials, especially their FTL, we can move into a system under cover of the Warp, deploy troops to specific missions, and then get out again quickly. I need you informed on the overall strategic necessities as we're likely to get partially cut off by temporal distortions again. I need someone who doesn't need their hand held by daddy who can work through adversity and get the job done," Tzintchi explained.

Rong-Arya was quiet before they asked, "Did you predict our stranding on the far side of the Doldrums?"

"Perhaps," Tzintchi answered slyly. "And if I didn't and I am merely exploiting the outcome to its fullest, can you blame me?"

"I would call bullshit on the first part of your statement but be forced to agree with you on the second," Rong-Arya replied.

Chuckling, Tzintchi said, "If it's any consolation we managed to briefly make contact with Lars, your communication daemon. He survived and we think he found a Z-Hub. Rough triangulation from the little snippets we got suggests that you may have nearly landed in the opposite Z-Hub yourself when compared to your navigational data. If you had gone in the other direction you probably would have seen it. That makes the ride you took unexpectedly large."

"Does it now?" Rong-Arya asked coldly.

Sighing, Tzintchi said, "Be angry if you want if you feel I have played with you, but I believed you and your crew strong enough to survive if I engineered the conditions for you to end up deep in the Doldrums. There is much outside my understanding, and much of what I understand is outside your understanding. And you know how your understanding exceeds the majority of your crew. But if you wish it in terms you can tell them, should the topic ever come up; then think of it this way. I am trying to protect us from the C'tan and all of the other horrors lurking out in the wider multiverse we have discovered. I need more information, and I need experienced crews. Your stranding got me both, and more. I might fuck you over to do it, but I'll at least give you a reach around while doing it. I'm a dick, but at least I'm _your _dick."

Frowning, knowing that they were being played by this simple form and words but unable to deny their god, Rong-Arya just shook their head and said, "We know… what now?"

"Once the refit is complete and we have rebuilt your crew you'll deploy to a quiet universe via the Alpha Hub, and then skip off the Central Hub to your base of operations. It's a quiet place, the local humans recently blew themselves up along with some aliens and left behind some interesting technology, so we can salvage stuff while there and if we get tracked back no one but us gets hurt. You will then use the Central Hub to hit the objective universe and draw them back to the Central Hub while keeping your own operational universe hidden from all factions. We will be sending scouts to the objective universe over the year or two it will take us to make the _Stiletto _ready for action, but you may begin operational planning with any approved members of the military and the preliminary scouting data," Tzintchi explained.

"I will begin as soon as my crew is properly disembarked and debriefed. Also… as the one who brought them here…" Rong-Arya asked.

"The Colonials will get a quiet patch of Western Australia to settle and establish an autonomous enclave. Not the most hospitable of places, but there is literally no one there right now, and we'll remain in contact while they get on their feet. Their jump drive, if useless for strategic and logistical movement in comparison to Warp travel, would have been worth the destruction of the _Stiletto _to acquire for tactical purposes. I see no need to force our culture upon the Colonials or maltreat them," Tzintchi said somewhat dismissively.

"Of course my lord. Thank you," Rong-Arya said enthusiastically.

"No, thank you. You have served all the gods exceedingly well in the performance of your duty, and you two are to be commended. Now, dismissed," Tzintchi said while turning back to the display of the multiverse.

Rong-Arya nodded and exited the throne room while Tzintchi grinned like a maniac. This was better than his best possible plans.

* * *

The girl wore red clothing of a style that had been out of fashion for centuries and sat quietly in the seat. I could detect hints of motion, but little else. My entire mind felt fuzzy and slow, and it took me several seconds to even notice her.

"Are you awake now?" She asked calmly and patiently while I tried to get my vision to clear properly.

"Vaguely…" I replied in an uncertain voice.

"That's good. When we found you we didn't know if you had survived. My friends left me here to make sure you wouldn't panic while we moved you to a safer place," the girl, petite young woman really now that I considered her more thoroughly, explained.

"Where are we going?" I asked uncertainly.

"Earth," she quipped.

"Earth… I know that name. Wasn't it…?" I asked uncertainly.

"It's a bit hard to explain to you in your condition, but the Earth where we're going is in good condition and we hope to patch you back together so you can help us out a bit with a few things," she said.

"Ah… what's your name?" I asked, still groggy.

"Vita. Can you remember enough to tell me yours?" She asked.

There was a long silence as I tried to get the memories to flow, and a few circuits opened up as repair routines undid some of the enormous, nearly permanently fatal damage to my personality core, but the hardware patches installed by these unknown yet helpful strangers were already bringing long dormant sections back to life.

"I am XXXIII/L-1823-SCP, 'Scipio'," I reply.

"Welcome back to Earth, Scipio," Vita said brightly.


	57. Strange Lessons

**Chapter Fifty-six: Strange Lessons**

For the children of Nesmé, the warnings to not stray out into the woods or monsters would get them had been very _real _warnings for generations, but still, children would be children and thus one of the responsibilities of the Riders was to round up stray young ones who wandered off before they got eaten. They weren't always successful, and life was hard and often tear-filled out on the moors.

Thus, despite the uneasy alliance -vassalage at gunpoint really- the parents of Nesmé warned their children away from the camp at their doorstep… and were promptly ignored by the younger and/or more rebellious members of the village who had yet to be scared straight of the dangers around them.

That said, those in the camp did not trust trolls around the children and they were constantly monitored by either Lars, Skuld, the Erinyes, or one of the wizards powerful enough to produce fire or flame to handle the brutes when around _adults_. But as with all things, there was one exception.

The children stared up in awe at the troll, sitting there quietly, its hair done up in ribbons and wearing a straw hat with pretty swamp flowers all about it. Between two enormous pink painted claws it daintily held a crudely made clay tea cup that was sized for a small human. In its other hand was any equally tiny saucer. A rough sheet of flax was thrown over it in a crude imitation of a dress.

"More tea Mr. Green?" Gunnhild asked while holding a rough tea pot in her hands. She wasn't quite sure where the idea for the game had come from, but she suspected it was daddy's side of the family.

"Yar," the troll grunted. Gunnhild glared at him and he tried to enunciate more politely, "Err… yes please."

Lowering the tea cup, the troll allowed Gunnhild to 'pour' the imaginary beverage before he raised it up and took a sip, extending his pinkie at the last moment before he could be told off. Trolls as a species weren't very bright, but this one had excellent Pavlovian conditioning.

"Thank you," the troll grunted in its rough voice.

"You're welcome Mr. Green. Would anyone else like some?" Gunnhild asked the braver selection of children who had gathered around the flat rock the troll had dragged into the clearing for Gunnhild's tea part. There was also a large, awed collection of children who watched at a safer distance.

"No thank you, I'm good now," Thomas Smith, son of a local craftsman replied. At ten he was just at the age to think he was the bravest person in the world without having a teenager's cockiness quite set in yet. While he thought the majority of the games Gunnhild like to play were stupid, he was enthralled by the way she so effortlessly commanded the trolls and if playing her games was a way to learning such things then he would put up with them.

"More for me please," Faeresta asked, holding out her little tea cup. The orphan child of a defunct house, she had been picked up the refugee column as they left Menzoberranzan and utterly adored Gunnhild.

"I still have half a cup left, I'll be alright," Emily Redford, another Nesmé child who refused to bend to anyone's will, replied.

"Marvellous, marvellous," Gunnhild replied dramatically before setting the teapot down. Adjusting her own broad rimmed straw hat, she asked in a gossipy tone, "Have you seen some of the patterns coming out of the new mill? Oh, those will _be _the talk of Waterdeep come the fall fashion season."

Had the word 'Victorianism' been explained to Gunnhild, she would not have understood why anyone would act that stupid to her reckoning, and those around her really had no clue about the strange cultural mishmash she had inherited from the dozens of minds that composed her father's form, but they all played along because Gunnhild found it fun.

"You mean the pretty flower clothing?" Faeresta asked innocently.

"Indeed. Quite the bit of finery, don't you think?" Gunnhild asked her assembled guests.

"My dad helped set up that mill thing," Tom said as something of a suggestion. "He helped set up the looms."

"Oh excellent! You know, my mother says that the hard labours of craftsmen like your father are what the future is built on," Gunnhild said cheerily.

Emily frowned and said, "Whenever _my _mother talks of the future, she says strange things like 'stop daydreaming, a man is the only thing in your future'."

In another life Emily would have eventually left home to become an adventurer, lived in Silverymoon for a while as a sellsword before returning home after nearly a decade's absence to try to rebuild the ruins of Nesmé and settling down with a cleric of Lathandor before both of them died a decade after that in the chaos resulting in the death of Mystra. _Again._ However, that timeline had collapsed into non-existence recently, so she had a rather different future ahead of her.

"Oh nonsense, mother wouldn't allow such a thing," Gunnhild said with an extravagant wave of her hand. Unfortunately, her crude little tea cup did not have the strength necessary to stay together under such an acceleration and the handle broke off, sending the cup flying, to explode on the stone of the 'table' with a spray of clay shrapnel.

Wincing, Tom looked down at the little shard stuck in his hand and the tiny drop of red blood welling up from the wound. A slight shadow then fell over his hand and he looked up to find the troll leering hungrily over him, drool flooding out from between the gaps in its razor sharp teeth as it reached a gnarled, clawed hand bigger than Tom's torso towards…

"_Mr. Green!_" Gunnhild barked, causing the troll to suddenly freeze up in absolute terror, its eyes loosing their hunger and instead gaining a spike of absolute terror. "That is _not _proper behaviour!"

A sour look on her face, Gunnhild's features then softened as she looked at Tom. "I am _so sorry _Mr. Smith, I must make it better." With a wave over her hand the tea set, constructed out of river clay by Gunnhild just recently, went flying, propelled by a telekinetic impulse.

Grinning in a slightly unsettling way, she said, "Let's play _doctor!_"

The troll whimpered.

* * *

Skuld had a mirror, a full length mirror, set up in front of her, a 'gift' from the town of Nesmé, although 'tribute' was more accurate. She didn't like the way she scared the poor people, but she had practically leapt upon the gift when it had been offered. It had been the first mirror she had seen in the better part of a year.

It had taken her six hours of staring at it, and later crying before it, before she had come to the conclusion that Belldandy wasn't going to step out of it.

She had then stared at the mirror for a long time, not hoping for her sister but wondering at the reflection she saw within. She remembered the time she had been turned into an adult after the Lord of Terror incident, and staring at the mirror now, she realized she was closer to that point that she had realized.

Some part of her was still childish enough to wish for her big sister to come swooping in and make everything all right. Another part, a growing part, was realizing that she was an adult now. The Underdark had changed her, had aged her in ways that mere time could not do alone.

Not that time wasn't important. Eventually, she had stripped off her clothing to stare at herself naked in the mirror, to see who she was beneath it all. She remembered a line from Nietzsche, "Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman suspended above the abyss."

She certainly felt like she was caught on a rope between adult and child, stretched thin. She supposed from the triangular patch of hair between her legs, her body had been trying to tell her that she was an adult for a while now; it was just that she hadn't really cared up until a few weeks ago. Goddesses didn't have the same physiological maturation as human women, but many of the outer changes were the same.

Sitting there, in front of the mirror, Skuld placed a hand on her stomach, above where her womb would be. She closed her eyes and sighed at the sight of Gunnhild's smiles. She wondered at other possible futures that might lie in store -that might have lain in store before Lars crashed into her life- and then she broke down crying again.

She had been _such _a bitch. She had been a selfish cunt. Once the thought of Belldandy holding Keiichi's child would have been from a scene out of her deepest, darkest nightmare, let alone the image of her sister _pregnant_. It had been inconceivable, it had been the equivalent of some sort of disgusting, tentacle covered monstrosity crawling out of the ocean to molest school girls in her mind.

Now she was trying to get such a beast to molest _her_ and the thought of Belldandy glowing with pride, Keiichi's ear pressed up against her belly to listen in to the heartbeat of the tiny life they had created together, and Skuld wept. She wept because she doubted she would _be there. _She had never properly celebrated the love her sister and Keiichi had.

Wiping away her tears, she looked up at the mirror before approaching it proudly, chin and chest thrust out, her head unbowed. She looked over her frame with an appraising but not critical eye. She could certainly do some more growing in all areas, but she was _not _a little girl. She was a _goddess_, and she was crafting her own realm brick by brick.

She had _taken_ the Shadow Weave from its creator with no outside help, proving her strength!

She had _chosen _to marry Lars with no outside encouragement, proving her will!

She was Skuld, Norn of the Future! She would make her own heaven on this world, become her own Valkyrie, and have her own king by her side!

Waving her hand, she conjured up new clothing, made from solid shadows, creating a tight, silky black dress that emphasized and accentuated her feminine traits while still leaving her plenty of mobility to get down and apply a wrench to a stubborn, oil covered bolt.

Maybe this change would help convince Lars to start fulfilling more of her fantasies. Like say working towards getting Gunnhild a sibling.

She was such a good little girl!

* * *

"Doctor Smith, you must hurry and find the tumour! The blockage is causing the patient such pain!" Gunnhild said enthusiastically while her telekinesis held down the 'patient'.

"This is so neat," Tom said while probing the troll's brain with his finger, watching as his poking caused the giant to spasm and twitch in strangely predictable patterns. He and the other members of the original tea party, plus several of the more curious audience members, were all covered in blood and other fluids from the troll.

So far they had done a quadruple heart bypass, removed a 'cyst' from a lung, and about a half dozen other surgeries while Gunnhild suppressed the troll's ability to regenerate until their play was done.

Lars meanwhile watched on from the distance, unnoticed by the children, two Erinyes next to him.

"Your daughter is impressively evil," Autu noted with an impressed tone.

"A touch yes, but you'll note she's also selective about those she plays with. She won't hurt the other children; it's a compulsion she can't overcome, but she does know who can take what level of roughness. For example, she knows that the troll she picked as her companion had a long history of 'playing' and she has a somewhat developed sense of fairness. I do believe our friend on the operating table will very nearly have learned his lesson by the end of this session. Plus she is teaching _invaluable _anatomy lessons, and she's even using mostly correct terminology," Lars said with some pride.

The other Erinyes, Caut, commented, "Sometimes Lars you sound like a mewling paladin, pleading for 'justice' and 'mercy', and other times you tingle our spines with talk of evil so grand."

Lars let a strange look cross his face, something dark and predatory yet gleeful. He looked down at the gathering of children before he replied, "Your Blood War can be summed up with the two most evil phrases my people know. Your foes, the demons, have the phrase, 'Because I can' on their side. You devils however have 'Because I had to' on yours. These two phrases, when distilled down to their essence, account for all suffering, and in the end, the latter is more destructive. The truest evil is not achieved by the men who think themselves the villain. The truest evil is done by the good man who does what he feels he must, and thus he does it without hesitation."

Lars paused before he said, "I _saw _the memories my daughter extracted out of that troll. He did not choose to be born a troll, he did not choose for the endless, predatory hunger to fill him, but he did choose what happened after that. The trolls are hungry and _have to _eat, but this one _could _slowly flay the skin off his victims' flesh, _could _squeeze the marrow out of their still living bones, and _could _seek out the smallest babies because they were so tender, so it _did_. And now I _can _watch my daughter and her friends peel it back layer by layer, looking at what makes it tick, and I won't lift a finger because _I am not a good man_. To my friends and family I will be loving and tender, selfless and self sacrificing. Nothing is too much for them. To complete strangers I will be polite and courteous. To those like the people of Nesmé who oppose me but who are just trying to live their lives, I will respect them while still grinding them into the dust. But to those who are my enemies, well… let's just say that the children done there will be getting a debriefing about the appropriateness of what they just saw, but the troll will just get a little smile from me. Understand me ladies?"

Both Erinyes were quiet with thought. They were somewhat chilled by this perspective on evil. It was a flavour they had never seen before. It was darkness contrasted with light, which instead of diminishing the dark only made it sharper and deeper. It was colder and more methodical than the evil of the Hells, yet more brutal and savage than the evil of the Abyss.

They _liked _it. It was the evil of a good man. It was the evil of the eldest days of Hell, when Asmodeus still walked amongst the heavens. They liked to talk to Lars about good and evil, and slowly they were starting to understand.

The greatest evil is not committed by a devil or a demon; it is committed by a saint.

Strange lesson indeed.


	58. Learning to Foxtrot

**Chapter Fifty-seven: Learning to Foxtrot**

The devil Akrak crouched down while carefully sniffing at the dead soil about the edge of the dead magic zone created by the destruction of the avatars of two gods. Crumbling the blasted material between his clawed fingers, the cornugon considered his options. This had been a dead end as far as the actual objective was concerned, but he should probably report back to Asmodeus anyway, if only so that the information could be disseminated back out to the other trackers.

There had been surprisingly few devils who knew how to find something without the use of magic. Their target was especially problematic in that they couldn't even look for holes in their ability to see things as the effect was more a case of their scrying slipping off the target than coming up with nothing.

Akrak on the other hand was an expert tracker in the Blood War, specializing in hunting down demons trying to cover their tracks magically while running across the planes. Akrak was good, not just at following physical signs, but at tracking the paths of rumour and hearsay. He could bring order to a mess of information, making him also an effective spymaster, even if his greatest talents still lay in tracking.

Straightening up, he looked over at one of his barbazu grunts and said to the glaive wielding devil, "Return to the portal. Tantras and all leads heading there relates to a fight between Torm and Bane."

Nodding, the lesser devil disappeared with a crack of air as he teleported away.

Looking back at his assembled squads, he noted their crisp professionalism as they kept up a perimeter around the destroyed area for their commander to examine. There were still survivors in the city, either those under fourteen summers or those who did not worship the sentimental fool Torm, but they were all under strict orders from Asmodeus himself to only scout.

He had made it very clear that the lives and souls of a few mortals, even a few thousand, were inconsequential next to finding their objective, that running was preferable to fighting unless there was no choice in the matter and any devil that disobeyed his orders would answer to him. _Personally._

The harvesting of souls would come later. Vengeance for past wrongs would come later. Even the conflicts of the Blood War would come later. For now finding the being known as Skuld was the _only _thing.

Brushing off his hands, he said, "Flyers, take to the sky once more. Land scouts, disperse."

With a series of cracks the squads all began to disperse, the flyers teleporting high into the air and miles away while the land scouts dispersed across the entire world of Toril once more. Primary activity was in northern Faerun, but Akrak refused to rule anything out. Especially considering the fact that many divine avatars had access to teleportation magic and were not limited in the same way as mortals.

With a crack of displaced air of his own, Akrak too teleported out of Tantras.

* * *

Simalessent had watched with narrowed, hateful eyes as the devils kept watch around the ruins of the battlefield between the two gods. While her original mission of seducing a paladin of Torm away from good and law was now rather moot as he was dead along with his god in the conflict, this was a rather interesting bit of information. The devils had a portal somewhere in Faerun and were carrying out an operation sufficiently important that they had not attempted to attack and enslave the undefended town.

Sneaking back into the city, the succubus descended into her hidden lair where she had weathered out first the large number of paladins and good aligned clerics in Tantras and then the appearance of an avatar followed by the conflict. She had already snatched up a human babe left abandoned when its mother had died to fuel Torm's attack on Bane, originally to reinforce her nearly shattered wards, but now she would take the blood and entrails from the little one and craft a different spell.

Having finished draining out the life fluid from the child, she casually tossed the tiny corpse in a corner to snack on later. Gazing into the large black iron chalice, she slowly stirred about the blood while whispering the sibilant incantations of a spell to reach across the planes. While the blasphemous magical construct took place, the chaotic energies of the Abyss interacted strangely. It was said that visions of possible futures could be seen in the blood, and so a smart demon always kept a careful eye what was reflected within, aside from the fact that it was never smart to not pay attention to a spell.

Curiously Simalessent saw _nothing_. It wasn't the nothing of the spell not working, but rather a more fundamental nothing. It was the nothing that remained after an incredible amount of destruction had been visited upon a place. As a demon, Simalessent liked that sort of devastation, but since she wasn't exactly sure where it was, she would prefer it to be the future of some good aligned plane or one of the Nine Hells, at the very least the realm of a rival demon.

Eventually though the image cleared and revealed a being that would have looked human if not for his obsidian black skin and the little horns that jutted out of over his glittering green eyes. Lounging casually on his throne, one six fingered hand draped over his perfectly sculpted abdominal muscles and the other idly toying with his greatsword, the demon lord Graz'zt looked back through the surface of the blood at Simalessent.

"My lord! I did not expect to contact you so directly," Simalessent grovelled. It was not wise to interrupt a demon lord when they had underlings for that sort of thing.

"Be still your heaving chest my minion, I drew the spell to me specifically. Something has happened near your location and I wish to know more. So tell me my dear, tell me what has occurred," Graz'zt said with a honeyed voice.

"My lord, I had barely arrived to begin my mission when the very avatar of Torm showed up and I was forced into hiding to avoid my presence being detected. My target unfortunately now lies dead and un-damned, his god having drawn the souls of his worshippers from their bodies to fuel a spell used to slay the avatar of Bane," Simalessent explained.

Waving it off, Graz'zt said, "A pity. My divinations had suggested something like this might have happened and perhaps if your target had been drawn to the Abyss instead of his fool of a god the spell would not have been quite as effective. Still, the loss of both the tyrant and the paladin has injured the cause of law greatly even if good probably came off slightly better in the balance, so my cause is advanced regardless."

Nodding, Simalessent said, "Yes, but there is something else. Shortly before I called up a contingent of devils surveyed the wreckage of the battle between the gods. There were many of them, at least a full Blood War scout platoon, and they were looking for something."

Graz'zt's features remained beautiful as always, but now they were schooled into a scowl that would cause weaker mortal men to cringe and women to swoon at his passions. "Devils? Did you find any indication what they were looking for?"

"I did not my lord, but they seemed dismayed. I think that they have a permanent, or at least semi-permanent, portal established to this realm and are quite possibly part of a larger operation. It seems to have something to do with the gods though, and they were in such a hurry they failed to attack the mortals in the city," Simalessent explained.

His expression settling into something a similar to curiosity with a touch of boredom, he ran a thumb across his jaw before he mused, "Curious… most curious. That spider-bitch Lolth has been making noise, attempting to contact the demon lords from her exiled position. She is talking a great deal about finding someone and is making implications that it would be greatly worth our while to join her in some plot of hers. If the devils are seeking something in the same area…"

Graz'zt let the line of thought free to percolate in the minds of those watching, which almost certainly included a number of his courtiers Simalessent could not see.

"Thank you my servant, I shall have to think about this new, valuable information more carefully, especially as some of Lolth's own treacherous offspring have been leaking me new information. Apparently the spider-bitch is not quite as lovely as she once. A pity. I shall have to see whether I will laugh at her disfigurement or step in as a gentleman and help avenge her," Graz'zt said with a grin before he waved his hand and the spell was ended at his side.

* * *

Upon the Plane of Shadow the Shade Enclave continued on its millennial journey through the dark realm as it had for the better part of seventeen hundred years, but for the past several tendays the inhabitants had encountered a rather disturbing problem. The regular Weave had been disrupted, but the Shadovar had redundancy in the Shadow Weave… except that the Shadow Weave was behaving strangely.

For the arcanists who had learned to manipulate the essence of shadow, those who worshipped Shar were completely and utterly stripped of their powers, the Shadow Weave seemingly now offended by her presence in their minds while they tried to cast any spells. The more atheistic mages on the other hand were capable of drawing on their powers as they always had. In fact, they reported that their abilities had been improving, the dark magic they practiced less unwilling and jealous than before.

The High Prince and his sons were justifiably worried over this turn of events. In the same way an adventurer faced with an inhaling red dragon is worried about hot air.

And now there was a strange stirring in the population, as sensitive souls began to have their sleep troubled by strange dreams. For days hundreds had stayed up when their bodies had told them to sleep, unidentified impulses gnawing at them. Already some had taken to expressing their dreams physically.

A smith renown for his particularly artistic and masterfully crafted blades was found staring at a crudely forged pipe with the trigger mechanism of a crossbow jammed in one end while muttering, "It means something."

A scholar with a poetic bent was discovered having scrawled strange symbols on dozens of sheets of parchment and got ink everywhere, destroying many valuable documents in his mad attempt to commit an unspeakable idea to paper.

A labourer picked up a chisel and a hammer and defaced a stone pillar, creating a strange work of unearthly, perverse beauty, of a woman and a strange creature that looked vaguely like the unholy offspring of a sahuagin, an aboleth, and a mind flayer. The creature was either attacking the woman or…

Most people who saw it _really _hoped she was being attacked, and those who thought otherwise were keeping their mouth shut. Especially since those that thought otherwise didn't want to draw attention to themselves.

Already though the Whispered, as they were calling themselves now, were meeting secretly, finding out like-minded individuals. The Netherese had never had any particular fervour for the gods as a people, and the same continued with the Shadovar. Shar was useful, but she was not the end all and be all for the majority of the people.

But for the Whispered, Shar had never had a place in their hearts. No, that dark goddess had never held sway over them, but they had learned of her ways from years of coexisting with her followers and they were now applying those lessons to their new focus. They knew if the Sharrans caught them they would be thrown off the city to die either on impact or from exposure in the shadowy wilds, at the very least, but they had a new Dark Lady.

Dreams of impossible things, _terrible _things danced in their heads, and they spoke in hushed voices to those they felt shared their visions. Their rituals were as crude as they were skulking and secretive, little more than madmen and women jotting down symbols and words they could not understand while trying to string together syllables to create words to explain concepts that had yet to be given names.

The Whispered swung through strange moods, unaware of what was truly happening to them. Those with children found sudden, almost excessive fondness for their offspring while women Whispered often found their sexual appetites growing out of control. Only one Whispered, a scholarly sorcerer with a little bit of experience beyond the Plane of Shadow had any sort of explanation.

Washal the Pale felt that there was a new goddess of shadow, a usurper over Shar. He had yet to actually voice this view, but it seemed reasonable to him. More than that though, the dreams of this new goddess were spilling out into the Shadow Weave, and those that were not already sworn to Shar but still sensitive to the magic were picking up whispers of those dreams.

Washal looked down in incomprehension at a string of symbols scholars on another world would call the Schrödinger Equation. To him the strange glyphs had been driving him mad for days, seeking expression, but even now that he had taken them from his mind and physically manifest them, he had no idea what they meant.

He and the other Whispered though were starting to piece together something rather incredible though. Hidden in an alien alphabet was a numerology that their dreams promised could let them shatter mountains or fly between the stars if they desired. They had already pieced a tiny fraction of it together, the first piece in a long chain of knowledge.

Washal knew of math, every arcanist knew that it was far more useful than the simple transactions peasants and merchants used it for, but he had no idea how much of it was hidden beneath the surface of things.

Their new goddess would show them.

* * *

Beneath the streets and upon the outskirts of Waterdeep, an extraordinarily powerful being danced amongst her followers, celebrating another day of existence. Achingly beautiful, the only material she allowed to conceal any part of her night dark skin was her own flowing moon silver hair.

However the spinning, ever flowing dance was interrupted by an unexpected interruption in the form of a slow, sarcastic clapping.

Breaking apart in confusion, the worshippers of Eilistraee moved to protect their goddess, only for Eilistraee herself to move them out of the way, stating, "You cannot face this one."

Chuckling, Vhaeraun said, "No, they can't sister."

"What do you want brother?" Eilistraee demanded.

"Just to pass along a bit of information. Mother is rallying her children and followers and all of her contacts amongst the demons. She is pulling in every favour and burning through every contact. It's quite impressive really, if sad. She even went so far as to send an emissary to my location during our exile, promising reconciliation if I joined her. I rebuffed the offer, but in a way meant to indicate that I am merely holding out for a better deal," Vhaeraun stated.

Narrowing her eyes, Eilistraee demanded, "Why are you telling me this?"

Smirking beneath his mask, Vhaeraun replied, "Because I have other contacts that give me a fuller story. You see my associate Shar has allied with mother for her own reasons and has let me in on what mother is so angry about. There is a godling running about that somehow managed to maim our dear sweet mother in a rather delicate location while also pissing off Shar. _Massively _pissed off Shar as she is offering a small cut of the Shadow Weave to any god that joins her and capturing the target. I plan on joining them both, but I have no renewed love for mother. And since I neither have love for you nor father…"

"You tell me knowing that father cannot allow an alliance between mother and Shar to go unchecked in the hopes that we will all end up killing each other," Eilistraee concluded.

"The simplest plans are the best, don't you agree?" Vhaeraun noted sarcastically before he disappeared into the shadows.

"Accursed assassin playing all sides against each other while he stands in the centre untouched," Eilistraee spat. Looking about her followers, she said, "Come, we have much to do."

* * *

Malar lounged quietly on a rock, still smarting from the wounds inflicted upon him by that bastard Nobanion in driving him out. His faithful lounged about him with equal quiet, but that was because they did not want to trigger a storm of wrath from their furious lord. It was unwise to poke a wolf while it was licking its wounds.

Of course, someone did.

Hidden up high in the trees, a figure cloaked in shadows whispered just loudly enough for the Beastlord's incredibly sharp hearing to pick up, "Pathetic."

His ears twitching, the blood thirsty deity immediately sprang into action, leaping from his stone to the perch up in the tree and shredded the branches with furious swipes of his powerful claws. The figure however had already moved to another tree.

"Poor, poor Malar. Still smarting from that thrashing you got? If only your rivals could see you now," the hidden figure taunted.

Crushing a branch beneath his claws, Malar restrained the urge to scream and leap at the source of the sound. He was savage, but he was smart enough not to be played for a fool like this. He would track down this interloper and make a necklace of his guts.

"Loviatar sends her regards," the figure said before flicking something into the clearing. Malar's worshippers all sprang at the location the object had originated from, but the Beastlord knew that the quarry had already left so he immediately dropped down to the bit of bait left behind.

And it _was _bait. Malar knew a trap when he saw one. But he was supremely pissed at the moment, and more than that, turning a trap upon itself was a particular joy, so if he could figure out the game being played, he could rip and tear his tormentor while turning the tables.

The object was a small brass tube, closed off and flattened at one end. It was the product of some civilized creature, but Malar found it fascinating as there were several interesting scents attached to it. The inner side of the tube held an acrid stench to it, of something burning, while the outside had the smell of being handled by several divinities. His tormentor had been clever enough to mask his own scent, but there at least two female divinities that had handled it within the past few tendays.

Inhaling more deeply, Malar noted something else. His divine senses were dulled in this avatar state, but he could still smell that there was something wrong. It was like his mind kept slipping over something. Pushing aside all of his rage, he focused completely on that scent. He had it right there in front of him, he just had to focus.

With a sudden stroke of insight, he broke through and discovered the scent. It was… female and divine, but it had a touch of something else to it. It also had the touch of shadows. Shar! That bitch! It didn't actually smell like Shar had in the past, but she was the only one with the sort of imprint of shadows that this.

The tormentor had mentioned something about Loviatar. Malar was uncivilized and had little to do with his fellow deities, but he did pay attention to the shifting politics and tides of power amongst his rival packs. Loviatar was allied with that scheming empire builder Bane, but she had associated with the Lady of Loss in the past. If something had changed the balance of power, such as the death of the bastard, then perhaps Loviatar would fall under the sway of Shar.

There were wheels within wheels spinning here, something that Malar hated. He was being played for the fool, something he _really _hated. But he would track down this scent, the creator of this strange object and discern the nature of this hunt.

He and his followers would then feast upon the entrails of their foes.

* * *

The gods were forbidden from returning to their divine domains, but there was mortal level magic that they had easy access to that would allow them to travel quickly across the material world. Stepping out of the darkness, Vhaeraun grinned at Shar and said, "It is done. It took some time to get organized, but in short order the best trackers on Faerun, the elven hunters and the beasts of Malar, will be hunting our quarry for us."

"Excellent work drow. Your mother would be proud of your duplicity," Shar commented.

"So long as we keep this a little _secret _between us, I am glad to help. We just need to wait for someone to find our foes and then unleash mother upon them. I do hope that father finds the mark first but mother arrives before him. The bloodshed should draw in Malar, and then we can sweep in and put down all of our enemies when they have weakened each other. I get my arrogant father and idiotic mother, Loviatar gets that brute Malar, and you Shar get the usurper. We all win," Vhaeraun said with a smile.

"That we do," Shar replied.

Both deities looked at each other and wondered at how easy it was to manipulate the other.


	59. Finding Charlie

**Chapter Fifty-eight: Finding Charlie**

At the start of the Godswar the people of Nesmé had been sent runners to keep up a correspondence with Silverymoon until a few tendays after the start when they had gone strangely silent. Lady Alustriel had unfortunately been rather busy with securing the city from the chaos of the conflict and in dealing with the death of her mother, Mystra. Then reports of massive destruction started filtering in from the North West and all attention was focused there.

Then, just a few days ago a caravan loaded down with fantastic goods had shown up at the gates of Silverymoon, seeking some very strange things. Nothing worrying… just strange considering the contents they came in with. They had dozens of huge bolts of processed wool and silk cloth dyed incredibly bright and vivid colours, each individually worth more than a small dragon's horde. They had incredibly hard and strong tools that every craftsman drooled just to look at.

And they had left with a bizarre collection of items. They had bought up huge amounts of livestock, both beasts of burden and food animals and as much gear for hauling material as they could. They bought up every last scrap of food that wasn't already part of the strategic reserve Lady Alustriel had mandated. Then when there was no more food left to buy, they started purchasing as much chrome, copper, tin, nickel, lead and other simple metals as possible, followed by the acquisition of iron. They didn't even care where the iron came from and they accepted bits of scrap in trade if they had room. They also emptied the city of its supply of rock coal and as much charcoal as would be sold to them.

They also emptied out the city of its entire saltpetre supply along with all of the sulphur the wizards parted with. The traders voraciously bought up huge amounts of raw materials and scrap, disdaining finished goods. And when they had bought up everything the city had to offer, they put out contracts to other traders to find what they needed elsewhere. The list was strange, including useless ores like bauxite. Also, the merchants had been extremely tight-lipped about where they got such incredible objects from.

To the learned members of Silverymoon, this only meant one thing: Nesmé was building something. The huge demand for food indicated a sudden, large upswing in population. What everything else they bought up was for, no one knew, especially with magic in a state of such flux. Much of it was being sent downriver on barges, but most of the food animals were being sent on foot down the road.

So an emissary had been deployed to Nesmé to discover what was happening there. Along with a small contingent of the Knights in Silver, the loremaster Cydric Axehand would see what had happened to Nesmé. While not the most diplomatic of individuals, the endlessly fascinated dwarf's near perfect memory would allow him to serve as an effective observer. With the addition of the much more tactful elven paladin Siralee Fairwind, it would be a good mission.

However, after quietly bypassing the returning caravan, the diplomatic entourage was stopped short of Nesmé by an incredibly strange and unsettling sight. There was a work crew upgrading the road. A work crew composed of a more polyglot collection of races than they had ever encountered. There was an overall rumble of Common and Undercommon, but a dozen different languages

Dozens of goblins were hauling away small stones and tree roots in the road while orcs, humans and bugbears either dug up a trench or tamped down the dirt and dwarves, both shield and duergar, argued with kobolds and each other over diagrams as an ogre manned a heavy rock crusher. Where they had not been the road was little better than a dirt path, where they were a mess of mud, sand, and stone ruled, while behind them was a paved, smoothed road that ran through the forest into the distance towards Nesmé.

Seeing the party coming, one of the human foremen looked up and walked over to the stunned and confused emissaries. Saluting, the mud splattered and sunburnt man said, "Greetings. I am Lieutenant Cole Michelson, commanding officer of C Platoon of Second Company of the Nesmé First Engineering Regiment. How can I help you people?"

There was a general amount of blinking before Cydric coughed a touch and said in his most regal voice, "Ah yes, I am Cydric Axehand of Silverymoon, emissary sent from Lady Alustriel Silverhand on behalf of the city to make contact with Nesmé and see why they have been quiet for the past month."

Nodding, Cole said in a rather unimpressed voice, "Ah yes, we were wondering when someone was going to show up. Just go around us as we work, someone in town should be able to confirm your credentials. Don't stray from the road though as First Company has scheduled demolition work up in the hills to start draining the moors and we don't want any accidents occurring."

Not quite understanding the warning but deciding to take it, the group moved their mounts slightly off the road, giving the monstrous work party plenty of room before they resumed their travel with significantly more trepidation than before. Nesmé was not well known for its tolerance, so either someone had taken over or there had been a sudden change of heart overnight.

Yet the monsters had all been working peacefully with each other and with the humans and dwarves with no signs of restraint or beatings. They all looked a touch underfed and many had signs of markings from beatings on their exposed skin, but that was all old. It was very strange, to say the least.

Continuing on, they discovered several very strange constructions in the form of bridges over dry ditches that zigzagged further up in to the hills. Peering at them studiously as they crossed, Cydric said, "Curious… they look like flood sluices. The farming prospects of the Trollmoors are notoriously poor due to abysmal drainage, and while possible to construct an irrigation system to redirect the water and drain out some of the areas, the presence of the trolls and the poor economy of the region have thus far made such a massive undertaking impossible."

"And yet this road is here. How fast would you say they are building?" Siralee asked, frowning at the implications of all of this.

"Oh, I would daresay perhaps between a half a mile to a mile a day. Many of the creatures present are capable of working in the dark and they seemed to have ample supplies and leadership along with an onsite camp, so they could conceivably work around the clock with appropriate shift changes," Cydric mused.

"So between half a year and a year to reach Silverymoon?" Siralee asked.

"Conceivably, yes. The winter and spring months would slow things down greatly, but then again they could potentially go faster in less rough terrain. I would say that given sufficient resources they could get their within two years on the outside, if they were so inclined," Cydric replied.

Siralee was troubled by this until they rounded a corner and discovered that further work had been done leading up to Nesmé itself. The forest had been cut back to twenty yards away from the road, with the process still currently on going. The entire landscape was being torn up as trees were cut up, the stumps torn out of the ground, the stones in the ground removed, and then the open spaces pounded flat.

Closer to the town within these growing dead zones were large, multi-storey buildings made from stone and brick, some still in the process of construction. Several of the ones that were active had tall chimneys spewing thick black smoke out of them. People and monsters moved about everywhere tearing down old things, moving materials, or building new things.

Siralee's eye twitched. She was a city dwelling elf, but Silverymoon lived in harmony with nature. This level of disruption was something rather upsetting to her, especially as it seemed to have been propagated by monstrous creatures.

Adjusting his spectacles, Cydric noted, "I had heard stories of the workshops of Lantan, but this is rather different, don't you think?"

Already a small contingent of foot soldiers with odd looking, ridiculously short spears in their arms while they wore matching dark blue uniforms and no armour. The composition was mostly human, but there were elves and even hobgoblins thrown into the mix. The leader of the group was a moon elf female distinguished by a horrific set of scars that ran up the right side of her face, caused by either a clawed beast or a many stranded whip striking her from the corner of the mouth the hairline above the eye. Only luck had kept her eye intact. Her only apparent armament was a light rapier at her side and a strange pouch with a curved piece of polished wood sticking out of it.

Nodding slightly, she said in a strangely accented voice, her lips not quite moving properly, "Greetings and welcome to Nesmé, I am Captain Valerie Shadesworn of the First Nesmé Home Guard Regiment. Our scouts had already informed us of your approach. Upon presentation of credentials you shall be escorted to an audience with Governor General Thrakka Oathsworn."

There was a general rising of eyebrows amongst the delegation from Silverymoon as Cydric handed over the scroll that authenticated him. While looking over the papers Valerie explained, "Nesmé has recently received a large influx of refugees, I amongst them. We seek a new life and many have taken up new names, while many of us have discovered new relationships with others. The previous government was also replaced with a constitutional theocracy. The heads of state are divine but the commander in chief and head of government are both mortals. Despite the fact that we currently have a population of approximately ten thousand we have a federal and civic government and constitutional provisions for a provincial level. Governor General Thrakka was selected by Prime Minister nee First Speaker Jygil Zelnathra both for his eloquence and as a gesture towards the refugee population that despite only having approximately a fifth of the population they would not be ignored."

Handing the scroll back, Valerie stated, "These appear in order… and from your looks you want to know why he's named Thrakka. Well it's because he's a hobgoblin, a former chieftain of an Underdark tribe who has thrown himself into the new order we are creating. Few have worked harder than he has, and they already have positions of power. Now come, I will bring you to him."

The group from Silverymoon shifted uncomfortably. A _hobgoblin _ruling Nesmé_?_ What had _happened _here?

Accompanying the crisply marching soldiers into the town, they discovered that the interior of Nesmé was being transformed nearly as quickly as the outside. The streets were in the process of being torn up for some strange reason while buildings were being torn down and consolidated into taller structures of stone and brick and cement.

At the heart of the town were two buildings. The first was the old town hall, while the other was a shining new building of brick and glass with a large clock and bell tower set at its centre. Set between two wings in a sort of demi-courtyard was a small jump of wooden structures that young children of a dozen laughed and played about while adults watched them. There was a light perimeter of steely eyed soldiers armed similarly to Captain Valerie about the place.

Most shockingly enough was the fact that there was a _drow elf _sitting on a bench in the shadow of the building keeping an eye on the children.

Seeing the shock, Valerie growled, "The guards around the Academy were posted there after several Nesmé natives threw a stone at an orc girl on the playground. Attacking children or staff is currently considered a capital offence, so don't even _think _about approaching uninvited, diplomatic privilege or not. Headmistress Kirilae would not approve."

Cydric coughed lightly and asked, "Did you say academy?"

Valerie nodded as she waited for the diplomatic party to dismount next to the town hall. "The Nesmé Universal Academy and Library. After the steel and textile mills were built it was the first thing the mages focused on erecting, and the first new building within the town's limits. They built it in three days. All children, regardless of race, religion, or resources are welcomed within and given a _free _education in languages, mathematics, history, politics and sciences with advanced courses in magic and engineering offered in later years. From the first son of a noble in Waterdeep to the poorest daughter of an orc barbarian, the Academy will accept them. It is the hope of the future."

Siralee coughed and said, "You sound very… human."

Valerie glared and replied curtly, "Live through what I have lived through and come back and talk to me."

Marching up the steps of the town hall, the delegation from Silverymoon was led into the inner chambers where the quiet rustle of papers and discussion was interrupted by Valerie bellowing, "I present to you Cydric Axehand of Silverymoon, here on behalf of Lady Alustriel and the city."

A collection of humans, most familiar to Siralee and Cydric as previous members of the town council all quietly began to pick up and organize a number of sheets of parchment while an immaculately groomed hobgoblin in an incalculably expensive suit of fine weave silk dyed a midnight black moved up to the delegation and said, "Ah, greetings! By the will and pleasure of the people and the gods, I am the Right Honourable Governor General Thrakka Oathsworn of the Republic of Noctis. I can see by the surprised look on your faces that you did not particularly expect to see a member of my race in such a peaceful position, and I must admit that a few months ago I wouldn't have believed it myself, but momentous occasions change us all."

Both Cydric and Siralee were left flabbergasted by the smooth way in which Thrakka spoke and the air of charm he projected about himself.

Clapping his hands, Thrakka smiled and said, "You have many questions, and I have answers. Come, come, we have been waiting for delegations from our neighbours to start arriving. We sadly have been too busy to send out anything beyond our borders what with all the construction and government building we have been doing until the caravan."

Leading Cydric, accompanied as quietly and discreetly as an elf in mithral full plate could by Siralee, to a small office, Thrakka sat down behind a desk and offered a chair to Cydric. Rather overcome by all of the bizarreness, the dwarf gladly accepted while he glanced all around him, trying to commit everything he saw to memory. Siralee preferred to stand and have her weapons close at hand. There were too many monsters running around to drop her guard.

Finally she asked, "What happened to the Riders?"

Raising a single eyebrow, Thrakka sighed theatrically and said, "You can rest assured that they are still alive… if indisposed and no longer available around here due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. For a community our size in such a beleaguered position, it was quite the blow to lose them but fortunately other circumstances have allowed us to build up our forces sufficiently that we now feel safe."

"Those troops with the toy pikes?" Siralee asked sarcastically.

Grinning to reveal sharpened teeth, Thrakka replied, "If you wish you can send a scouting party to the Uthgardt barbarians of the Elk tribe that attempted to raid us and ask about the 'Thunder Reapers' of the First Regiment. We are quite capable of defending ourselves."

Waving it off, Cydric said, "My guard is merely worried about our safety here."

Clearly not believing it but not caring to comment, Thrakka replied, "We are quite capable of defending our borders. We currently have in our stocks a hundred weapons that can punch through the finest steel plate with a single shot at over two hundred yards and a hundred soldiers trained in their use. And that is only counting the mainline troops. Including support units, the engineering regiment, and militia skirmishers we can call up close to a thousand soldiers, although obviously not for the long term as that is a tenth of our adult population."

Seeing the suspicion in Siralee's eyes, Cydric pre-empted her and asked, "And what do you seek to do with such credulity straining weapons and forces?"

Thrakka smiled and said, "Defend our homes and property. The Trollmoors have been cleared of the trolls and await proper mining and cultivation to provide wealth and employment for the citizens of Noctis."

Furrowing bushy dwarf brows, Cydric asked, "What does Noctis mean anyway?"

"It is a word in the language of the gods that means 'night'. At night when the stars and moon are out, light and dark are blended and harmonious, giving rise to the _Pax Noctis_, or 'peace by night'. For those who are active during the day, they can sleep at night knowing they are safe, that the only things stirring are their night dwelling friends and neighbours. Conversely, for the nocturnal, when the sun rises they will have the same reassurance from the diurnal," Thrakka explained.

"Admirable," Cydric said while clearly not having any heart in it.

"Yes, but how do you _maintain _your society like that?" Siralee asked poignantly.

"We have a motto: 'Force if necessary, but not necessarily force'. The objective is not to create a dictatorship; it is to prevent those that might harm others from doing so. So far our police forces have had to deal the most with the humans of Nesmé who are prejudiced against us and the orcs who are common enough that we can't keep our eyes on them while not quite yet understanding what this society means. Trust me though, when you lean on someone because your leg has an infection from untreated whip marks for a week, you cease caring about things like race or what your ancestors did to each other," Thrakka said with a shrug.

"So you ask your people to just _forget _what has happened in the past? To forget thousands of years of raiding and pillaging by orcs and goblinoids and _drow_? To forget their history and ancestry and generation upon generation of tradition? To forget their families?" Siralee hissed.

Thrakka's expression was blank for a moment before he said, "In a word: yes."

* * *

Far away in the port city of Luskan, one of the few female members of the Arcane Brotherhood marvelled at the discovery she had made. The disruption to the Weave had badly weakened the Brotherhood and forced their confinement to the Host Tower to keep the captains from realizing the true extent of the damage.

Marella however had discovered something. She had discovered a way to _harness _the chaos within the Weave to her own purposes, to direct the random energy towards levels that few could ever conceive of. She could perceive the changes and ripples in the Weave at an instinctual level now, could feel the ripples in her magic and the magic of her enemies and time her attacks accordingly.

All because of her discovery of something living within the Weave, a conglomeration of all the pieces of mages lost to magic over the millennia, their presence suppressed by Mystra for all this time. There were archmages who had delved too deep and wasted away, their minds unable to join the afterlife so laden down with magic were they. There were liches who had suffered phylactery overloads and instead of being drawn into the Abyss they had their souls sucked into the Weave. There was a fragment of a Netherese archmage who knew of magic impossible in the modern era. Tens of thousands of years worth of experience was at Marella's beck and call.

And all they wanted were two things: the destruction of the Chosen of Mystra so that they would never again be suppressed, and the destruction of the Shadow Weave.

Yes, the strongest of the minds in there was very insistent about that last point.


	60. Whiskey and Tango

**Chapter Fifty-nine: Whiskey and Tango**

"You cannot control a man with death, for excluding the undead, the dead are inherently incontrollable in the sense that there is nothing _to _control. No, you cannot control a man with death, but you can control him with the _fear _of death. Once you understand this distinction you will realize that it is fear that gives you a hand hold on the actions of a man. But not all men fear the same things, and in the same ways. Thus the first step in conquest is to understand the enemy and discover what he is afraid of. This is not an easy task as most people will try to conceal their fears to avoid just this sort of thing happening. But you can learn to discern fears by looking at actions and peeling back the layers of motivation to find the little terrors that rest beneath. The greatest practice you can achieve in this is to peel back your _own _motivations to find the core of fear that rests within your heart and learn to use it, to know when you are being manipulated. Thus we have unity of purpose. To achieve victory we must know who we are and who our enemies are. When these are known, one can defeat ten and a thousand can defeat ten thousand, for you will feel no fear and your enemies will experience their worst nightmares."

There was a hushed silence over the small lecture theatre as Lars spoke, his students listening in with rapt awe. Everything was going so fast, but Lars refused to postpone this class even for the arrival of the delegation from Silverymoon. He and Skuld had agreed quite vehemently that they would not become overlords, that they would be teachers and not dictators.

Nesmé needed its next generation of generals and statesmen. Dozens of lifetimes of attending boring management meetings discussing Sun Tzu's Art of War or other books had finally clicked together and made sense, and the actual wisdom behind the pithy little sayings often parroted uselessly without context rose to the surface.

Glancing out, Lars asked, "So class; what is it that _we _fear?"

There was a general whispering amongst the dozen students with minds young and malleable enough to suit his purposes. He had phrased the question with intentional ambiguity to see what would be said.

"The Uthgardt? Parliament has been discussing war with them for the past week," a particularly cunning orc girl named Rusha suggested.

Lars nodded while he wore a neutral expression and he said, "That is one possible answer. But it is a surface answer. _Why _do we fear the Uthgardt? _Why _have so races stood in suspicion and fear of each other for thousands of years? _Why _are so many on all sides of the conflicts so eager to throw their lives away to get at their foes?"

There was a general rumbling from the class. There were two orcs, three hobgoblins, one drow, one moon elf, four humans, and one dwarf amongst their number, and while none of them had grown up in the sort of environment Lars hoped to create and only about half of them had actually been with them in the Underdark, they all had the sort of qualities that would ensure that they looked beneath the surface of things. Of course, due to accidents of birth such as their species, their gender, their social status or the fact that they were born too close to Menzoberranzan and became slaves ensured that _none _of them would have ever grown up to do great things. Lars knew this and they all knew this, which was one of the reasons why he had chosen them.

"Because those with power fear to lose it, and those without power fear the retribution of those with power. Uthgar has his portfolio and he commands his people to obey his edicts so as to maintain his power. The shamans and the chieftains and whatever else receive the blessings of their god and use that power to secure their positions. The common Uthgardt fears the retribution of their rulers in life and their god in death, not just to them but to their family," Kirander, a male drow who ran away from his house during the retreat summarized.

"Good. So they all have their pride and their fears. The fear of death alone is insufficient to deter them. The Elk tribes have decreed the destruction of civilization to us. The Uthgardt in general find our forestry projects offensive. They have refused to come to an agreement on boarders with us. We are reaching the stage of the final ultimatum. What final fear can we attempt to manipulate to force them to back down?" Lars asked.

There was quiet as the students thought about this for a long time, the more brutal members of the class clearly thinking about declarations of ultimate destruction and rejecting them. Finally the quietest member of the class, a glassy eyed girl from Nesmé spoke up. Her voice was soft and somewhat trembling, but that made her words somehow more awful.

"Tell them that if they will not consent to peace then it will become a war of annihilation. If they win, they will merely kill us, for we will fight to the bitter end to protect our homes. But if they lose, we will not kill them, not all of them. No, those who do not die in the fighting will live to see their world turn to ash. We will take proud young men and turn them into broken old men staring at a world already past in the reflection of their bitter ale. We will make beggars of their women and children, and in our charity we will take them. Their women will eagerly warm the beds of our soldiers for they will provide more than broken old men, and their children will be raised as our own. Because we are 'good people'. Because we are 'good people' we will leave them howling impotently in the dark and the cold, broken and shattered, the name of the god forgotten to the sands of history and comment on how we were kind enough not to kill them all," Tricia said gloomily.

Lars blinked a few times before he said, "Depressing outlook on life, but _effective_. Yes, if you take everything from a man, you transform him from a thinking, feeling being into a beast that only feels hatred and exists only to attempt to end you. If you make everything _leave _a man then you have destroyed him and his will to fight. There will be anger and hatred, but much of it will turn inward. Threaten a man's home, his wife, his child, and he will dig in and fight to the end. Threaten a man's _future_, the very things he fights for, and you will sow doubt."

Ruminating for a few seconds, Lars then said, "This brings me to another point, the aspect of punishment. There is a parable where I come from, about a minister who decided that since people fear death then if execution is made the punishment for lesser crimes then imagine the compliance against greater crimes! Unfortunately this then leads to the following situation. A platoon of troops has been delayed due to unforeseen circumstance and their captain asks his men 'What is the penalty for being late?' to which they all reply, 'Death'. He then asks 'And what is the penalty for rebellion?' to which they reply 'Death'. The captain then says, 'Gentlemen, we are late.' Always, _always _graduate punishments, always give a way out. And as your classmate has pointed out, sometimes death is not the worst punishment you can give. Sometimes the worst punishment is kindness. For the proud, the worst death is a slow death, over many decades, watching everything they have built crumble before their eyes as you replace it with your kindness. Threaten them with this fate should they not comply, and you will get better results than if you threaten them with just death."

Lars then grinned and said, "Now, since we have gone a little off track, we will be using today to explore your own fears, the parts of you that you must know and understand if you wish to defeat your enemies."

There was a slight pause before he said, "I will help you discover these fears."

* * *

Having left Siralee to fume elsewhere, Cydric allowed Thrakka to lead him on a tour of the new construction for Nesmé. Cydric had no love for the hobgoblin, but he was fascinated by the new creations. He knew he was also being manipulated and that he had not the skill of speech to overcome such manipulation, but he could still gather information for his superiors.

"And this here is Spider Grove, the source of the majority of our textile material at the moment. A tribe of particularly intelligent spiders have settled in the Plane of Shadow near here and they come here to exchange their silk for food. Somewhat strangely, they are particularly fond of freshly sheared sheep, so we get extra material for our clothing," Thrakka explained, gesturing to an empty little clearing ringed by trees with a large stone and brick building next to it.

"What is that building for?" Cydric asked.

"That is our textile mill. It's where we take the raw wool and silk we gather and turn it into finished cloth. It is also where some of our mages are establishing their order. They have a special connection with spiders and their magic allows them to summon forth additional spiders to milk for their silk, quite the profitable venture," Thrakka replied proudly.

"Ah yes, I do believe I have read about the arachnomancers of the Underdark. They are a rather immoral breed of mage, are they not?" Cydric asked.

Thrakka was quiet for a moment before he replied, "I will admit to the fact that they have a certain ruthless, _amoral _streak, but they receive excellent pay for their services, research materials, and high social standing. If they are 'evil' then they are also not _stupid_. So long as they do not break any laws, _we support them_. They thus stand to lose significantly if they step outside the boundaries placed upon them."

Frowning, Cydric replied, "If there is one thing I have learned about mages, it is that the only boundaries you can place upon them are the ones they personally place upon themselves."

"Then it behoves _us _to ensure that they remain sufficiently fat and happy that they do not want to leave their boundaries," Thrakka replied, clearly annoyed. He then gestured to a work crew nearby. "Now this is interesting. You see, we are intending to replace the entire infrastructure of the town, installing a whole new sewer and water supply system. You noticed the drainage efforts on your way into the town?"

Cydric nodded.

Smiling brightly, Thrakka said, "That is part of our effort to construct an aqueduct for the town as well as opening the moors up to agriculture. By draining certain sections of the hills we can construct stable platforms for our waterworks. Our current plans call for a system easily expandable to a minimum of a hundred thousand residents for Nesmé and the surrounding area."

Cydric sputtered incredulously before he said, "A hundred thousand! That's ten times greater than your current population!"

"Today," Thrakka mused. "As a member of one of the short lived races, it is unlikely I will live to see such expansion but we wish to take the long view. Growth and change is inevitable, especially if you are prepared for it."

"Some would call such overreaching planning arrogance, perhaps even hubris," Cydric pointed out.

"There is a difference between arrogance and just being that damn good," Thrakka replied, grinning broadly. He then looked around suspiciously.

"What are you doing?" Cydric asked.

Holding up a placating hand, Thrakka replied, "I've been informed that saying something like that inevitably means the statement will be tested within the next minute in some suitably ironic fashion. However _not _saying it when appropriate is grounds for actual arrogance."

Cydric was about to comment on the stupidity of the statement rather bluntly when a breathless messenger ran up to Thrakka and said, "Governor General! The Uthgardt have massed against us."

There was stunned silence for a moment before Thrakka replied, "I did _not _expect that to work!"

* * *

Lars crouched in a small stone overhang that served as a temporary command shelter. He had really hoped that they would be able to avoid this situation, that a diplomatic solution was reachable. Unfortunately, it appeared that the Uthgardt tribes had just been biding their time as they gathered up reinforcements.

"Current numbers stand at three to four hundred tribal warriors armed with mixed weapons and leather based armours complemented by one hundred fifty to two hundred skirmishers equipped with slings and composite short bows. They have brought about two dozen boats made of leather and shielded on top with scavenged pieces of mail and plate armour. It looks like they intend to make a mass crossing under cover of their projectile troops," the scout reported to Lars and Thrakka.

"Marshal?" Thrakka asked while using Lars' technical rank, even though he commanded fewer troops than a major would be expected to lead. Still, Lars and Skuld had agreed to establish excessive amounts of government _now _so that they could begin developing a new national character and new traditions; only they had yet to fall into the tin pot dictator trap of actually believing their own hype.

"We have to drive them away, plain and simple. Anything less and they can hit the civilian population. Anything more is a bonus," Lars explained as he began organizing a force deployment chart.

"So far our encounters with the Uthgardt have been in what is nominally 'their' territory, if only they would deign to actually let us define boundaries of coexistence, and they have faced only single squads of the First Regiment mixed with troops they understand and at numerical inferiority. They fear our guns, but they don't really understand their power yet," Lars noted.

"Then we get one good surprise and then it is gone," Thrakka replied. While it had been discovered that he was actually an amazing politician, he had at one point been a tribal leader in the Underdark and understood some of the broad strokes of warfare, even if so far only Lars and to a much lesser extent Skuld actual had any idea how to fight a battle with gunpowder weapons.

Lars nodded and said, "With the permission of the Governor General, the Marshal of the Armies of Noctis would like to allow the forces of our enemies to commit to battle."

Thrakka thought for a moment before he said, "Declaration of war is impossible for the Governor General without a majority decision by parliament… _unless _sovereign territory is invaded in which case it is my solemn duty to command the marshal to lead our armies in defensive action. Since they have already all but declared war it could be said that it is no longer my decision but…"

"Half way across the river. Once they cross that point they are in our territory and will have crossed the point of no return in terms of actually engaging in conflict," Lars said before he sighed theatrically. "This is going to be _bad_. The force out there must represent every adult male Uthgardt within a hundred klicks. We're going to cripple their economy, a sustenance economy I might add, and leave them vulnerable to attacks from others."

Thrakka grinned in a very hobgoblin sort of manner, even if he was rather dapper for a hobgoblin, and said, "Then their women and children shall come to us and become workers for our farms and mills."

Lars was at least glad that Thrakka had ceased thinking of the conquered as slaves. He wasn't so pleased that Thrakka had clued into how Imperialism worked _far _too quickly.

Passing along his battle plans, Lars exited the cave and took a look at how his 'army' was forming up. He had _two '_regiments' at little better than company strength, and one of those regiments was the engineering corps so they were little better than grunt workers who knew how to swing their shovels like axes at the moment. For his actual battle regiment, he had one company of rifled troops and two companies of skirmishers. Against a force like this his skirmishers were actually useful, but they were also outnumbered and his skirmishers were lighter than what he guessed were about equivalent of medium infantry from the Uthgardt.

Lars looked out over his battle line and grimaced. His rifled company consisted of two regular platoons and one command platoon. Already they were forming up into a thin line oriented at the top of a bluff sloping down towards the water. The command platoon had the centre, flanked on each side by two regular platoons in a rough V-formation. Each platoon had two squads of ten and they would fire by squads in volleys. That meant for every volley he would get off approximately fifty shots.

And while he would have liked to have a couple of claymores or some mortars or howitzers, the Noctis Arsenal had managed to make a few bigger guns with the surprisingly small budget given to it. He had two six pound cannons and one highly experimental Gatling gun. The cannons he had positioned at the 'wing-tips' of his formation while the Gatling was at the centre. The Gatling would go through their limited supply of ammunition frightfully fast if used, but if it worked properly it would scythe through Uthgardt barbarians with equally alarming alacrity.

Finally his skirmishers were spread out along the flanks. Mostly those who had yet to start training with gunpowder weapons or who had yet to acknowledge the superiority of the weapons, they would protect the gunners and cannons from melee if it came to that. Lars hoped it wouldn't as it would mean something had gone terribly wrong.

Raising an eyebrow, Lars then noted, "I was unaware that we had cavalry."

Thrakka shrugged and said, "Knights in Silver. They wish to help in our defence and I decided that in the interests of furthering future alliances with Silverymoon I should allow them to observe. I made the point clear not to interfere with the battle unless aid was requested though. Their leader is a bitch, but I don't think she wants Nesmé any more than we do."

Lars shrugged. As they got settled in and the bards they had hired as signallers and inspiring presences settled down their martial music, Lars watched the Uthgardt get into their boats. As surprise attacks went, it was actually pretty good. The Uthgardt missile troops would _just _be able to reach the opposite bank so the main force could establish a beachhead without meeting a Nesmé troops right on the shores. Sure, they would be waiting, but their leaders probably saw that as inevitable.

Thrakka lowered his telescope- a product of Silverymoon bought years ago- and said, "I do believe their boats have crossed the half way point."

Lars nodded and said, "They have."

Thrakka grinned and said, "We are now officially at war. Please begin, marshal."

Addressing his signallers, Lars said, "Snipers are to kill the proud idiot wearing the massive elk antler helmet. Tell the cannons to aim at the missile troops on the far bank. At my signal, the riflemen are to begin volley fire on the boats. Volley fire is to cease when all boats have sunk or on my order. The Gatling gun will hold in reserve until I say otherwise."

There was a quick blowing trumpets and beating of drums until the riflemen on the front lines were all lined up and ready, each squad aiming at a different boat. The squads behind them were eager to move forward and take the place of their comrades once their guns had fired. The cannons took careful aim at the far bank, aligning with the centres of the enemy formations. It was all rather ragged, the soldiers having had perhaps two and a half weeks to actually train with their weapons, but it would be enough.

Then there came a trio of cracks. A week after consolidating their control over Nesmé a trio of young hedge wizards had come forward, interested in the guns and the extra power they gave. When they had demonstrated the spell _true strike _they had immediately been made the first three members of the military to wear the Sniper Cross on their uniforms.

Folsom the Bull Elk, a fifty year old veteran who had lived through countless battles and had united a dozen villages in arms against these new creatures that accepted the hated orcs into their ranks, angered their totem with the existence and _growth _of their city, blasphemed against their god Uthgar by cutting down so many trees, and had attacked and killed twenty warriors- died. Before he even set foot on the shore claimed by his enemies, he died. A rare and seasoned warrior who had stood against trolls and ogres and orcs and other creatures and had the scars to prove it, he died to two boys and girl who had yet to see their second decade. His axe, forged generations ago out of adamantine collected from a fallen star and set with a handle of bone taken from a black dragon, dropped into the river, its wielder slain by weapons less than a month old.

"Open fire," Lars commanded. It took a few seconds to get to the troops and the volleys were not a single wall of sound and smoke, but he could not argue with the results. Three of the boats were hit, the result of miscommunication resulting in an over saturation of fire on two of the boats. The lead shot ripped through the leather boats, puncturing holes in the craft and the men within. Two of the boats veered off, the crude paddles thrown aside by twitching, dying bodies, while the third actually began to sink rather quickly.

The cannons made a one-two roar as they fired asynchronously, one of the shots going low and thudding harmlessly into the far river bank while the other crashed into the lines of bowmen at about knee level, ripping apart men as the vicious little iron ball bounced along the ground.

Lars watched and remembered just how much a daemon he truly was as he felt joy at the carnage he was orchestrating. He would not revel in it, but he could not deny the carnal satisfaction at killing his foes, the predator within him cackling in glee at being fed a sight of blood spilt and meat split.

Then the next line stepped forward and at a command from the major in the command platoon, they took their turn at firing, finishing off the two wallowing boats and wounding two more. Already confusion was taking hold as the Uthgardt tried to figure out what was going on. It wasn't magic because their wards and protections had not been activated, but it killed like magic!

Twenty seconds later and the first squads were reloaded. There was another burst of fire, this time perhaps a touch more coordinated, and more men died. If it hadn't been for their religious prohibition on cutting down trees, the Uthgardt might have made more wood with which to build sturdier boats, but their little leather affairs were horrifically fragile.

After the cannons fired again, reloading at the rate of about one shot every minute and a half, the missile troops, already on the verge of panicking, turned and ran into the woods. They had probably only been staying because they wondered if the cannons could repeat their deadly attack, and now that they had their answer they were not going to stick around.

"Cannons, cease fire. Have the Gatling rake the boats along the water line," Lars ordered, causing another flurry of activity as the commands were passed along.

A few seconds later a rhythmic chattering noise began, spouts of water bursting into the air around the boats until the gunners found their range and the confused, milling boats started to get hit. Several had turned in the confusion, exposing their unarmoured flanks such that the bullets now hit one side and if not stopped by human flesh they passed out the other side of the boat. All at water level.

The Gatling worked gloriously for about half a minute before it jammed. Unitary bullets were still a bitch to make and the brass cartridges were being reserved for other uses at the moment. They didn't have a proper paper industry established yet, so they were using light wool cartridges. They sucked and caused all sorts of jams, but the riflemen were trained to clear their guns. The Gatling had no such proper clearing of the debris.

Still, the roar of the cannons and the death rattle of the Gatling had completely broken the morale of the Uthgardt. They were leaderless and they had lost a huge percentage of their forces before they had even made landing, half their boats having already sunk and the river stained red. They were in full retreat now.

"Harass them until they cross the halfway point then cease fire. I suspect we have crippled or killed two thirds of their forces today while taking no losses. For all intents and purposes the Elk tribes in this region have ceased to exist. Perhaps now we can get them to negotiate," Lars ordered, hoping it would be the last one of the day.

A few seconds and considerable confusion later one of the cannons fired, obviously having considered the new order to harass to apply to them and supersede their orders to cease firing. Lars would have pitched an eldritch fit if not for the fact that the crew made a beautiful shot that hit one of the larger, still intact boats dead centre and tore it to scrap and bloody body parts, the whole thing collapsing and sinking so quickly it dragged a good thirty Uthgardt to the bottom of the river in seconds.

Lars blinked and then said, "Cease fire! Everyone cease fire! Damn it, we still need to work on communication. Reprimand the cannon crew for firing without orders, but commend them for excellent shooting."

Thrakka shrugged and said, "Well at least we weren't fighting a determined, disciplined enemy with sufficient numbers to force the issue."

Lars turned his head ever so slowly to glare at Thrakka before he hissed, "You did_ not _just say that!"

Thrakka grimaced and said, "Sorry."

* * *

"We have got possible lead, sir. Our spies tell us there is some sort of disturbance in Silverymoon related to the town of Nesmé," one of his scouts informed Akrak.

Nodding, the devil scoutmaster said, "Does anyone have the exact coordinates of Nesmé? No? I did not think so. We will gather and jump to the nearest known point and then approach on the ground with stealth to avoid potentially startling the target into fleeing before we can confirm. I want us there in two days!"

* * *

Graz'zt sat in his court looking out over the information his spies had been gathering on the movement of the devils and from within Lolth's ranks. There was apparently a surge of activity. Someone had noticed something.

Musing for a moment, he said, "Get me a myriad of troops, the Blood War seems to have slowed in tempo for the moment so we should be able to take them from there. Get them to the Material Realm and have them stand-by for a teleport assault. I want to drop a 'surprise' on the first target of opportunity we get."

* * *

Gruumsh sat plotting within a mountain stronghold along the Spine of the World. Thousands of orcs had flocked to his avatar, and while there had been some raiding and conquest it was not enough. There were no great targets for the god and his followers to attack that were within their reach.

Until word had filtered to him from his scouts that the most hated king of the god of the elves had stepped out of hiding on Evermeet and was on the main continent. Now _there _was a target worth attacking!

Gruumsh had given simple orders. Find where the elf bastard was going and then he and his hordes would march out and kill him and anything else that got in their way.

* * *

Siralee watched in mute horror as the massacre took place. Admittedly, the Uthgardt had been attacking as the Noctis politicians had yelled at them repeatedly across the river to just turn back, that they could discuss things. The Elk tribe had always been problematic as they wished the destruction of all civilization, but they weren't outright butchers.

The magic weapons they had on the other hand…

She had to get back to Silverymoon to warn them!

* * *

Marella sat at upon a throne she had dragged in from elsewhere, the bodies of her rivals piled around her. Power had come quick and easy since her discovery of such a deeper understanding of the Weave. She could listen to the harmonious vibrations of magic and add discord and destructive resonance into the pattern, amplifying her own arcane skills while robbing her enemies of theirs.

So what if her hair was falling out? So what if her eyes had been reduced to glowing points of light? So what that no matter how much she ate she was withering away, her skin hanging grotesquely off her bones. She had power!

Yes, power, and now she knew why the remnants wanted the Chosen dead and the Shadow Weave destroyed. With them out of the way, it would be all hers! Hers! The conflux of the Weave around the mythal would make for an interesting plaything.

She had to get to Silverymoon!

* * *

Malar sniffed the air. He and his followers could just smell the scent of their prey. But… there was something else now. The winds carried not just physical smells to the bestial god, but also the tides of things to come. He could smell… conflict. He could smell blood that had yet to be shed. A great and savage battle was coming.

Such things were still hard to track due to the strange quality of the source of the scent they tracked, but Malar felt that they were perhaps still a half tenday out from their prey and the inevitable trap that lay there for them. The only question was if they could arrive before the coming storm of blood or not.


	61. Foxtrot Uniforms, Bravo Alpha Romeo!

**Chapter Sixty: Foxtrot Uniforms, Bravo Alpha Romeo!**

They were simple things really, just little ribbons composed of coloured thread sown into the dress uniforms of the soldiers, but they were the first military award to be given out. All members of the First Regiment were now permitted the honour of wearing the service ribbon for the First Battle of the River Surbin. The design was of two green bars flanking two wider blue bars flanking a single thin red stripe down the middle.

Lars sat in the home he and Skuld had built… well, mostly Skuld… looking over reports. They didn't have a proper paper industry established yet and already there were stacks and stacks of reports. Lars had insisted upon it, even if they annoyed him. Of course, with over a hundred souls to work with and the capacity to grow additional eyes and limbs, he could multitask in ways that ate through paperwork.

He had always suspected bureaucrats were otherworldly abominations when he was alive and now that he knew how his afterlife worked and how good he was at the stuff now that _he _was an otherworldly abomination, it seemed to confirm his previous suspicions.

Then he hit a bit of paperwork that caused him to pause and merge down to a human form such that he could look at it with his full attention. Turning his head slightly, he asked, "Skuld, you figured out a way to fix the Gatling?"

From the bathroom where she was bathing in a hot, steaming bath, Skuld said through the partially open door, "I was wondering when you were going to reach that file. And I _sort of _figured out a work around, in that I can fix the problem for a few weapons but not for many of them. However, by the time we have more than a few weapons the ammunition problem shouldn't be a big deal, and we'll probably move towards something like an M2 Browning anyway."

Lars was quiet for a long moment as he read over the report in more careful detail before he replied, "The juvenile male in me, of which no man ever truly loses, is unabashedly giggling like a school girl. The military man in me is drooling at the tactical implications. And the daemon part is cackling inside, in a way that would drive most mortals insane with fear."

Padding on wet feet across the rough black granite floors, Skuld leaned down on Lars, her face peering down at his, long black hair hanging wetly around both their faces, and she asked, "So you're turned on right now?"

"If I was physically capable of it, I dare say I would be rather aroused right now," Lars said with a shrug.

Grinning, Skuld said, "Come to bed then. Come on, you do the work of ten men."

"That's because I don't need to sleep and I can do twelve things at once," Lars replied. He then sighed, "And we need a hundred of me."

Skuld frowned and said, "Yes, well _I _only need one of you right now, so come on. We're cuddling _mister_."

Neatly stacking away the papers, Lars got up and was not at all surprised to see that Skuld was currently doing a fair impression of the Lady Godiva.

Grinning broadly, Skuld said, "Look, no little girl body here!" She then hopped underneath the covers of the bed, an eager look on her face.

Dissolving his casual dress uniform into some light pyjamas, Lars slipped under the covers on the opposite side of the bed.

"Technically those clothes are part of your skin… thus we're _both _naked," Skuld pointed out cheerfully as she moved closer to Lars, pressing up against him, only a thin sheet of silk between them.

Turning to face her in the darkness, although both of them could see perfectly even in the absolute absence of all light, Lars actually grinned back and said, "Do you know how much sex the people of Nesmé have been having?"

"A lot?" Skuld ventured.

"That's an understatement. Everyone is busy, but since the factories run on eight hour shifts and we pay unskilled workers two silver pieces a day as a starting wage and a five day work week, the average worker actually has more free time than before while producing more. The people of Nesmé are starting to see prosperity, and along with the jubilation of the Menzoberranzan slaves at being free and all of the new marriages, it's been pretty interesting for a psychophage," Lars explained.

"So you're incredibly horny?" Skuld asked.

"Like you wouldn't _believe_, especially since I've been siphoning such emotions off Gunnhild to prevent her from doing anything inappropriate," Lars replied.

Skuld then squeaked in surprise as a prehensile tentacle wrapped around her thigh _scandalously _high.

"Ooh… you're a _naughty _one," Skuld cooed.

* * *

With an unholy flare of light hidden by the trees, Marella arrived, along with a contingent of her followers and some expendable foot soldiers given to her by the High Captains in admittance of her supremacy over the Host Tower. In reality she knew they had been sent along with her in the hopes of acquiring some pillage, but the pirates would make good distractions for the minions of Silverymoon.

For her part, Marella had dove deeper and deeper into the strange mysteries of the Weave offered by the remnants. Silver-white fire burned within her empty eye sockets and her heart was visible beating within her chest, the incredible glow illuminating her bones from the inside out, her flesh and organs translucent and tinting the light blood red. The remnants however had already taught her how to overcome this limitation of the flesh by tattooing long chains of complex symbols on her flesh, creating wards that grew stronger the more power flowed through her, preventing her corporeal form from incinerating itself under the strain of channelling the rawest magic on Toril. Already new wards were spontaneously forming, creating glowing gold bands of symbols that floated about her body, constraining and controlling the chaotic flow.

Already some of her acolytes were starting to add their own warding tattoos as their eyes began to burn out from delving into the new field of magic she had shown them. None were as favoured by the remnants as Marella though. None were as favoured by the Weave _itself._

The Weave around the city was relatively quiet in these troubled times, kept in control by the mythal at its heart and the presence of one of the Seven Sisters. Marella began to carefully pluck at the strands of energy with her mind, listening to the discordant resonances she was creating. As a tiny shockwave would travel along and bounce off the stability of the mythal, she would reinforce it on its way back, turning tiny plucking into increasingly powerful waves of wild magic that steadily assaulted the mythal.

Marella could feel the mind of the Chosen start to react to her interference. But it was too late.

With one final mental shove, it was _much _too late.

* * *

As a daemon, Lars didn't particularly need to sleep, but he could enter a sort of low consumption state where he mostly focused his energies inward to decrease external losses. In the current high ambient energy environment and with all the attention focused on him by the people of Nesmé, he didn't particularly need it, but as he lay snuggled up next to Skuld it was the next best thing to actual sleep.

His rest however was rudely interrupted by a sudden surge in the Weave, a big one that temporarily knocked out all enchantments based on that form of magic. It was more than enough to ping his senses. And once he turned his senses outward again he saw something coming in the near future that did not bode well.

Leaping out of bed so fast he forgot to sort out the tangle of limbs with Skuld first, the two of them hit the ground hard before Lars morphed back into a more human form and he ran to the windows, a human part of him wanting to see what his other senses were already telling him.

Visible across intervening hills and the horizon, the light of dawn could be seen. There were two problems though. The first was that the light was coming from the _north_-east, impossible at this latitude. The second was that it was _midnight_.

Gasping as she saw the terrible light, Skuld said, "Lars…"

"Silverymoon just blew up," Lars replied, his voice devoid of horror. Thousands of minds around him were starting to put off huge amounts of terror, but fear never made a daemon afraid. He had no physiology to spike him with fear. The only thing Lars feared was the loss of his new family, and panic would not help them now.

"What happened?" Skuld asked.

Focusing on the distant action for a moment, Lars winced and said, "All the energy built up in its mythal was released in a single instant. Casualties are probably catastrophic right now."

"What do we do?" Skuld asked as her eyes remained glued on the distant, if now fading, light.

"It's too far for us to do anything tonight… _officially_," Lars replied. "However, what I can't do as Marshall of the Armies of Noctis I can do as Lars. If Thrakka asks, I'm out gathering intelligence for later campaigning with my own personal household guard."

Lars then went to his desk and pulled out his God Killer shotgun and a bandolier of shells, pocketing the most powerful shells carved down in that lightless cavern all those weeks ago. Slinging the gun, he then altered his form into his drowned commissar form and then changed his face such that he looked like he was wearing a face plate of solid, sea corroded brass bolted together. He could see perfectly fine, and he had other senses, but the effect was thoroughly unnerving to look at for most mortals.

Hugging Skuld close, he said, "I'll be back. Tell Gunnhild I love her."

Exiting the room, he found the Erinyes already waiting, their new swords strapped to their sides and their bows and arrows replaced by AK-47s and magazines. They also wore blank faceplates made of half-silvered glassteel, moulded to their features and done up in faint, malevolent grins. Since they had no need to breathe, possessed telepathic communication, and light would always be more intense outside the masks and they could see perfectly in any level of illumination, there was literally no downside to the freakish masks.

Their appearances had also subtly changed due to either extended exposure to Lars or some sort of other weird side effect of the contract aside from the brands of his symbol above their sternums. For one thing, everything they wore looked like it had been submerged in salt water long enough to _just_ start the process of disintegration but not quite long enough for it to have affected structural integrity. Metals looked slightly tarnished and fabrics ragged, but only ever so slightly in a way that just looked _wrong_. Strangely enough, when removed from their presence, any such item looked perfectly normal.

Even worse though was the way they moved to the mortal eye. Even while moving at full speed their motions appeared slowed and lazy, almost like they were underwater. Their hair and wings were the worst offenders, seeming to have buoyancy and inertia unnatural to the air, moving too slowly for their environment.

Looking around the Erinyes, Lars said to them telepathically _We're going to Silverymoon. Teleport on my mark._

An instant later the eight Erinyes all activated their natural teleportation abilities and Lars grabbed on to the space-time distortions and rode the extra-dimensional movement. For a teleportation it was a short jump, but Lars was quite glad he accompanied them all to Silverymoon as from the perspective of space and time the whole area was a gigantic snarl that only a daemon used to riding out on a communications boom during a Warp Storm could have a hope of figuring out.

Pushing the teleport into a stable zone, the nine of them appeared with an crack of displaced air into the sort of scene that only Lars could truly appreciate, having lived through this sort of thing more than once in his lifetimes.

The part of the city that was the heart of the mythal was _gone_. In its place was a bleeding hole in the fabric of the cosmos, a seething core of raw, untamed magic opened up to the mundane world, casting a harsh silver-white light over everything.

Around the crater formed by that destructive magic, the rest of the city burned all the colours of the rainbow as regular combustion was tainted by magic. In some places wood burned bright green flames that turned into creeping, ensnaring vines that wrapped up victims, preventing them from fleeing the same fires that created the vines in the first place. In other portions of the city stone melted and combusted, producing shimmering purple flames that turned to rolling yellow smoke that coated everything it touched in molten glass. In still other places would be fire fighters threw water on flames in attempts to douse them only for the water to burn like oil, spreading back to those who had thrown it and causing all the water in their bodies to similarly ignite, spreading the fires further.

There were other horrors too. Spells were randomly manifesting, and some of them were even starting to take on a life of their own. Lars watched in mute fascination as a woman went to scream only for the sound to take on the expression of ever shifting runes of strange colours in the air, strange, partly squamous, partly rugose things that only a daemon could appreciate. The words then formed into a writhing mass that flayed apart their creator with fire and cold and fossilization before they oozed off to find a dark hole to hide in.

_Note to you girls, that thing is pure chaos, I would recommend not touching it,_ Lars advised.

Once the initial assessment was finished, a few subtler things were noticed. Like how there was a band of pirates, apparently either river pirates, landlocked ones, or very _lost _ones, looting the outskirts of the city, generally caring off anything or anyone that wasn't pinned down or on fire.

Oh, and flying about the city above the hole in reality hurling balls of fire and bolts of lightning at each other were Alustriel and a gaunt woman surrounded by swirling bands of runes carved from magical light, her heart burning like a small star. Alustriel for her part seemed rather hard pressed by the attacks, forced on the defensive by the cackling monster.

_Kill the marauders, save the civilians. I'll gather intelligence and then see if I can do anything about the psycho bitch on fire up there _Lars ordered.

_Why save the civilians? _Orin asked.

Surprisingly it was Falagoro who answered, chastising _Because it will be easier to annex this area later if we are seen as saviours rather than conquerors._

Nodding, Lars ran off into the holocaust that Silverymoon had become, looking for anyone out of place while the Erinyes began to open fire with single shots on the raiders, rushing between piles of rubble, picking off the confused attackers while remaining within cover. With their otherworldly motions, inexplicably deadly weapons and the scenes of carnage reflecting off their masks, they were beings of pure horror, causing the raiders to break and run into the fires of the night.

His jacket flowing behind him, a banner of rotted leather with the appearance of seaweed trailing behind him, Lars was on a whole other level of horror as he allowed the unnaturalness of the daemon to surge to the forefront, adding twists and angles to his body that did not add up properly and caused the eyes to ache just looking at him. Then he found his prey.

There was a smaller wizard's duel occurring on the ground, with Silverymoon wizards hurling spells at a small group of attacking wizards that burned with lesser versions of the fires within what Lars presumed was their leader. The attackers seemed utterly at home in the wild magic produced by the glowing ball of light, capable of predicting when the magic would surge and when it would fizzle and timing their attacks and defence accordingly. Two of them seemed content to blast away at the defenders while a third, presumably the strongest, was countering their attacks, slowly drawing magic saturated strands of the Weave closer to her, building up to a massive attack.

Psychically grabbing a thread of magic they had been using, Lars yanked on it at exactly the wrong moment for his prey. The mage who had been gathering energy suddenly discovered that she was no longer in control of the chaotic spell she had been gathering, and that her heart had just been replaced with the fire seed of an empowered fireball with the 'fire' part replaced with pure force. The explosion turned her body to a fine red vapour and pummelled her compatriots, hurling one into the crater around the burning core of wild magic where he promptly had a brood of baby beholders spawn in his stomach and gnaw their way out, trailing entrails as they tried to escape the mutating effect of being so close to so much raw magic.

A few of them might have made it, but Lars didn't care because he had bigger fish to fry. Rushing forward, he grabbed the broken and blood covered but still alive body of the other mage in the attacking party. With a sound of tearing metal his brass mask tore open, the jagged edges forming secondary teeth for the collection of swirling, gnashing, cutting teeth and tentacles and _stars _within his infinite maw, reaching out to grasp the mage and haul him into the bottomless depths.

The man screamed and died from shock, his body weakened by his injuries, but in the instant before his soul vacated his body Lars slipped past the shattered mental defences and pillaged the contents of the man's mind. It seemed that they were lead by the woman duelling Alustriel, and their proficiency with magic and their ability to harness and even _create _wild magic stemmed from their ability to perceive and manipulate the Weave on a fundamental leave thanks to certain things they had discovered existing within the Weave itself.

Dropping the dead body, Lars resealed his mask and looked up. Marella, the name of the leader of this attack, was winning. She was using part of her concentration to begin building an attack similar to the one her minion had attempted to construct, but she was much better at it, and much more aware of the waves within the Weave.

Taking out his shotgun and flipping the safety off, Lars took the direct route.

Divinely crafted and enchanted, but not to the max or with daemonic blessings, buckshot slammed into Marella's wards, explosively burning out on the shielding of raw magic, battering the psychotic mage with concussive force. A rib, illuminated by her glowing heart, visibly snapped. This distraction caused her to fail to catch a bolt of force hurled by Alustriel, and while it too splashed off her wards, she instinctively flinched and thus completely lost concentration on the spell she had been forming out of the magical remnants of her duel.

The spell, of a power not seen since the Fall of Netheril, was released only partially formed into the wild. Originally intended to sunder Alustriel's connection to the Weave permanently, it instead manifested as a living field of null magic, a bizarre contradiction that still lashed out at its unintentional creator and the nearby Alustriel as it began to plummet towards the ground.

Both transparent pseudopods hit, completely nullifying all of the magical effects on both women, thus causing them to plummet towards the ground. Marella hit and bounced hard while Lars made a sliding save to catch Alustriel, letting his amorphous body deform beneath her to cushion the blow a little.

Dragging her into cover and making sure she would live; Lars sprang to his feet and ran into the open just in time to take a lightning bolt to the chest. Normally he would have just shrugged it off, but to keep his ammunition from cooking off Lars let the energy conduct through his body around his weapons, inflicting damage to his Warp substance.

Standing in front of the burning ball of light, drawing wisps of energy into her already mending body like a white dwarf feeding off a larger companion star and about to go nova, Marella stood, her empty sockets burning with malevolent sunlight while her blood dribbled from her mouth and burned like thermite.

Pumping his shotgun, Lars blasted Marella, but this time the mage threw up a shield of force that caught the deadly pellets well before they reached her personal wards.

_Well… this will take some thought_ Lars muttered telepathically.

He turned to run just in time to take an arrow to the shoulder, only this one _hurt_. Crying out in agony as the arrow burnt his essence, Lars then took another one in the gut in his distraction before he managed to roll away into a pile of rubble. Marella also took several arrows, but they flared on her wards, their enchantments causing them to explode well away from the psychotic mage.

Pulling out the arrows with conjured tentacles, Lars looked at them and realized that they were of elven make and divinely enchanted. Creating an eye, he extended it up over his cover. In the second before he had it shot off, he caught glimpse of a sight that would have made him wet himself if he felt had the capacity to feel fear or physically wet himself.

Three_… _no… _four _avatars of the elven pantheon stood a good kilometre away, backed up by a massive elven war host. Two of the gods were armed with longbows and two with swords. Lars had initially miscounted as distinguishing such powerful auras from each other at this range was difficult and one of the sword armed elves had dark skin that made her harder to distinguish from the background.

Lifted off his feet by an explosion generated by Marella throwing a fireball at him, Lars discovered that he was trapped between a mage capable of beating down one of the Chosen of this universe's goddess of magic in a magical duel, and _four martial minded elven gods!_

The phrase 'rock and a hard place' came to mind.

Calling out, Lars ordered _All right girls! Full retreat! Meet at my position… wherever that might be once I'm done running._

Crawling out of his crater to find that the air was now filling up with non-divine arrows from the mortal followers of the gods, Lars allowed himself to become a pincushion if it meant he could use the distraction to get into the ruins of a building. Squeezing through burning rubble, he switched out his regular shells for the full power ones.

Lars had just enough time to get one shell in when he was forced to duck to avoid having his head taken off by a longsword as he exited the rubble.

Corellon Larethian was standing right in front of him and did not seem in the mood to discuss who had caused what and why even though Lars _was _admittedly an eldritch horror from beyond he was a good guy. Lars was at close range with a master swordsman who had spent tens of thousands of years perfecting his art. Lars did the only thing he _could _do. He fired point blank range.

Amazingly Corellon dodged _most _of the shot, dancing around it, but two pellets struck him, grazing his flesh along his right side and nearly passing through completely but detonating just as they brushed the muscle beneath his skin. The leader of the elven pantheon cried out as the concussive force caused grievous damage to his right flank.

Muttering a telepathic _Sorry _Lars then smashed the distracted Corellon across the face with the butt of his gun, shattering the god's jaw in the process with the divinely crafted weapon. Now thoroughly incapacitated for the time being, Lars managed to shove pasted and make for a less hostile section of the maelstrom of fire and magic and war that was Silverymoon.

Seeing her father wounded, Eilistraee cried out, rushing to go slay the foul creature that had laid him low. However before she could get there a blade lunged out from a pool of darkness she had not realized was deeper than usual. Barely parrying in time with her own sword, the collision of the two powerfully enchanted weapons in such a chaotic zone set off a shower of burning sparks.

Emerging from the pool of magical shadows was an immaculately dressed man wielding a rapier cloaked in frost. He had an unearthly beauty about him, fouled but not lessened by the pair small of horns that adorned his forehead. Grinning slightly, he said, "Not today elf, not today."

Emerging into visibility from around the glare of the wound in reality arrived a dozen squadrons of flying devils, already starting to throw fireballs and other magic down at the elven positions and at Marella. One particular devil wreathed in fire cackled maniacally as he hurled balls of fire possessing unholy heat down on his enemies.

A giant slug creature emerged from the rubble, toppling a building as it ground it under.

A wicked hag on a burning nightmare emerged out of the flames.

A powerful pit fiend leading legions of lesser devils teleported in to cordon off the city.

Walls of iron began to sprout up, dividing the battlefield towards the favour of the devils.

The forests about Silverymoon began to burn as a pair of devils marched through it, the younger female one throwing off indiscriminate fireballs while the older warrior let just the image of him terrify the mortals that saw him.

Another gigantic creature, this one more snake-like, appeared.

Eilistraee's blood ran cold. The Archdukes! The Archdukes of Hell were _here!_

And then, standing out in the open like an orchestra conductor who had always been there, was Asmodeus.

_ALL OF THEM!_

"Retreat!" Eilistraee shouted out. "We can't stop them!"

"A pity, I do not think either of us had tested all of our skills to the limit yet," Levistus noted mockingly.

The elven gods and their followers looked hesitant for a moment as their leader was still trapped down in Silverymoon, wounded, but with Levistus holding Eilistraee at bay and all of the Nine present with their armies growing by the second, they had no chance of making a breakthrough.

Marella for her part looked almost sad at having her victory snatched from her, but one look from Asmodeus had her teleporting out in a second.

With the elves retreating and the battle won, Asmodeus cried out loudly yet majestically, "Restore order! Crush any resistance! We cannot stay here long, so _find _that creature! _Alive! _Ignore everything else!"

* * *

Meanwhile, completely oblivious to the arrival of the forces of Hell in Silverymoon due to spectacularly bad timing, Lars and the Erinyes teleported back to Nesmé. Covered in smoke and grime and the Erinyes showing tans on their exposed skin from overexposure to raw magic, they stumbled into the town square.

The army already mustered out, they looked at their marshal, still clutching at where he had been hit with the arrows of gods. Wincing, he looked at all of them and said, "We have a bit of a problem."


	62. Blackstone Waltz

**Chapter Sixty-one: Blackstone Waltz**

Washal the Pale sat in his library, slowly watching the flicker of a candle, his eyes caught in rapt fascination by the colour. The Whispered had made a bit of a breakthrough when they tried to use magic to read their writings. Actually, the rulers of the Shade Enclave had tried that first, but it was the Whispered who had actually started gleaning meaning out of what they read.

The discoveries were… _incredible. _They still barely understood the huge majority of what they were looking at, but they were learning concepts that seemed impossible and nonsensical, and yet they were _true_. The Netherese had known of some of the mathematical concepts, used in the construction of their mythallars, but this went far, _far _beyond that. They had understood the concept of zero and to a certain extent the concepts of numbers _less than_ zero, but they had never particularly considered either concept all that useful outside of some high level, esoteric magical applications.

Now the Whispered were grappling with _infinity_, which once they wrapped their heads around it became mind bogglingly useful when combined with other concepts. The idea that numbers held so much power was a staggering concept. Oh, there were numerologists who already claimed such things, but this was a much more subtle and nuanced approach.

Over the past several tendays since they had started deciphering their own writings, the Whispered who had not been rounded up by the rest of the Shadovar had began secret experimentation, things that they did away from the view of others because they looked crazy while doing it. They did things like raising weights to certain heights and measuring the time taken to fall and the depth of penetration into materials like loose sand or clay or other such things.

To write down the things in their head was a nightmare, but to actually take those writings, make predictions with them, and then _confirm _them was something entirely different. It was a glorious moment of epiphany to realize that they possessed in their hands the _truth._ That the universe obeyed an orderly set of rules realizable by simply _looking at it!_

And yet they had also quickly realized that their manic scribbling contained more information, _bizarre _information, and that their initial work, their initial truth was merely the surface of something larger, stranger, more complex, and ultimately more useful. Like the thing Washal had just discovered.

"The colour proves it, it proves everything. That the candle flame is orange proves that the world is orderly in ways we can't imagine. That the candle flame is orange proves that the gods play dice," Washal muttered while staring at the flame. He then began to chuckle. He barely understood the most fundamental precepts, the more complicated formulas required the measurement of concepts he didn't even know how to build the measuring device for, and yet he _knew _that the colour of light produced by the candle was critical to the understanding of everything.

For decades Washal had studied the theories of magic, and now he discovered that the theories of the mundane were so much more _interesting! _He had always thought himself a master of precision in crafting his spells, yet looking at the results of what he saw before him made him feel sloppy and inefficient. Magic was a way of getting around the mundane, but if you didn't _understand_ the mundane you would never know where it was to get around it!

Yes, the few arcanists amongst the Whispered had already been putting their new knowledge to use improving their spellcasting. They had some interesting results already.

Yes, interesting results indeed.

* * *

Skuld had long lived in the shadow of her sisters, a fact that it had taken her quite some time to acknowledge in Urd's case. She had a tendency to go overboard, to push too much power into things, to take the shortest direct line route even if that went through a mountain. Not over, _through._ Things she built had a tendency to explode when she wasn't careful, which was far too often.

Living for months as a captive, stripped of all her divine powers and technological advantages, had given her a new perspective on things. For one, it had forced her to very carefully use her knowledge instead of immediately leaping for the solution that would produce the largest explosion. It had invested her with a sense of caution and of subtlety. She always had the capacity to build stable, robust systems, but she had never felt the need so acutely before.

Weeks spent meditating on the Shadow Weave had also altered her perspective. There wasn't as much energy in there as in the Weave or from Yggdrasil, but it had some interesting properties, especially when used properly. It had not been used properly since it had been built. Its creator had disdained the brute force approach, but had limited understanding of all the ways to get around such limitations.

Skuld was not so limited.

She sat naked in a specially prepared pool of water, although mist and shadow from the dawn cloaked her such that she was as good as clothed. The pool was shallow, only up to her waist, but the water black as oil and had a mirrored surface, the only ripples coming from the steady, regular waves produced by the tremor of her body as she breathed and her heart beat. Around the perimeter of the pool there were a series of carefully carved runes from the Yggdrasil programming language. Skuld wasn't sure if they would do anything, but they would hopefully protect her from any unforeseen surges of magic as she attempted this.

Surrounding the pool, laid out carefully, were pages and pages of parchment showing detailed plans and schematics. Both they and the pool itself had been in development since shortly after arrival at Nesmé, but neither had intended to be used together or so soon.

But Lars was hibernating as he repaired damage to his otherworldly body, piecing together the very thoughts and emotions that bound him into his form, wounded by divine magic. The city, her city, _their _city, was in danger. Nesmé was a fragile thing, a child with the gleam of the future in its eye. Skuld would _not _let that be taken away.

She would not let Lars be taken away from her. She would not let Gunnhild be taken away from her. She would not let her _family _be taken from her.

It had hurt enough to lose her first one.

_No _psycho bitch with too much magic or flighty elf was going to take her family away from her. If she could be a bitch to Keiichi for loving her sister, then she was going to find the current trophy holder of 'Bitch Queen' and bludgeon the wannabe to death with the award.

Skuld reached out with her mind, plunging into the Shadow Weave, gathering forth immense amounts of magic. This would be her biggest project yet. She had seen Belldandy do something like this once to repair the temple, only this spell was much, _much _bigger and harder and Skuld had much less experience.

First she used the Shadow Weave to access the Plane of Shadow, an entire realm of shifting, malleable material, only partially real and thus only partially set in its shape. She began to draw material from that dark place, moulding it, creating a template for her later work.

Out around Nesmé, stretching from the fortifications previously used by the Riders and stretching out to encompass the entirety of the town and a considerable amount of additional space, the growing dawn shadows began to bubble forth with darkness, stretching out and swirling in the morning twilight, creating massive illusionary walls and black, monolithic structures.

The air thrummed with power, and Skuld gave the energy life and structure, an embryonic tone that reverberated up the spines of all of those who could hear it. The dark adapted workers ceased their labours and exited their factories, while those asleep awoke and exited their homes to gaze out upon the changing landscape.

Skuld then plunged sprues of shadow down, deep into the core of the planet, through the honeycombed layers of the Underdark to the deepest realms where the rock would glow if not for the fact that there was nowhere for light to exist. It was a realm of heat and shadow, a realm she could tap.

The brute force way would have been to simply draw the rock up, but that would severely drain Skuld's reserves of power, and this spell was already trying enough. No, she was going to do something infinitely more subtle. She cloaked the material in shadow, near infinitely fine shadow that permeated every layer of the substance down to the atomic level. Quantum interaction ceased, and tens of thousands of tons of liquid rock became a mass of wave functions, unobserved by the universe.

Within the confines of her shadow construct, the particles could exist anywhere, in any configuration so long as they existed unobserved. Skuld chose to 'observe' them within the confines of her construct, the air taking on a percussive quality as the universe flexed and flowed into this new configuration. Aluminium, silicon, oxygen, iron, titanium, vanadium, and carbon were her rainbow as she painted in three dimensions.

The air itself sang with her creation, triumphant notes that filled the hearts of those who witnessed it with joy, causing many to collapse to their knees in exultant wonder. Bards, many of them originally hired as mercenaries to help bolster and coordinate the regiments, openly wept at the beauty and structure of the song, trying to memorize each note but knowing that the structure was too complex for any one man to perform alone.

With a final strung out note Skuld's work was completed, just in time for the sun to breach the horizon, shedding rays of light that blew away the shadows like smoke suddenly caught by a strong wind, revealing the structure beneath.

What the people of Nesmé beheld was a star fortress, a great defensive work that had overlapping kill zones in every direction. The only way to get to the gates was via running a gauntlet that would allow the defenders to shoot at the fronts and backs of their enemies. Basalt and granite, diamond and sapphire, steel and stone composed the structure, folded and blended monocrystalline sheets that formed one solid, contiguous unit.

But the people of Nesmé saw not the solidity of the massive structure, for it appeared almost deceptively translucent despite the fact that it was opaque from one side to the other, for sheets of clear diamond and dark blue sapphire set on top of mottled black and gold stone created the image of near intangibility. Variances of the chemistry within the gem layers produced sparkling three dimensional dots that shone like stars. It appeared as if the very night sky had been peeled off the heavens and placed around Nesmé.

To a certain extent, this was true in that Skuld had crafted the stone to become a massive magical well, an artefact that drank magic directed towards it and the area around it like the night sky drank the light of a bonfire, like the light of the _stars_. No mortal magic could touch it, and even the magic of the gods would be hard pressed to overwhelm it. Only the works of mortals paid for in blood and iron could hope to scratch the surface of the fortress.

The fortress was a promise to the people of Nesmé, to the people of Noctis. The stars were theirs if only they would reach out and touch them.

Her work done, Skuld slumped over in her pool, exhausted from her work. Set free, her mind drifted.

Surprisingly she discovered Gunnhild at play, dancing amongst the dreams yet to come of the people of Nesmé. Past, present, and future; impossibility and possibility; what was, what could be, and what had been; all of it drifted and mingled and Gunnhild watched them with quiet, rapt fascination.

Looking up, Gunnhild squealed and rushed over to Skuld, hugging her legs while she said, "Mommy! Look at all the new friends I'll have!"

It was hard for Skuld to interpret what she saw. Lars had explained to her what a bitch it was to try and look at the future but it wasn't until she had seen it for herself that she understood why his predictions on things tended to be broad, general, and somewhat obvious in retrospect.

But as she looked, she realized that her decision to create the fortress herself now instead of giving the plans to the people to build themselves had been monumental. Its construction stood at a crossroads in time. Everything was still uncertain, still probabilistic, but down one branch many, many lights tended to die, tended to never exist, while down another the potential remained for tens of thousands to shine brightly.

Skuld guessed that without the fort, many, many people in Nesmé would have died. It weighed upon her like a great block to know this, to know they were so close to disaster.

"I like this one," Gunnhild said, pointing to a flickering, undecided dream, a life that teetered like a coin on its edge, the balance disrupted but the outcome still undecided.

Examining the dream more closely, Skuld was taken aback when she discovered that the dreamer was barely conscious, barely capable of consciousness, and yet it reached out for her tentatively, its mind as delicate as its soft fingers.

A child, a child yet unborn, dreaming in the womb, and it asked without language, "Will I see the stars?"

Skuld didn't know what to say, didn't know how this was possible. She didn't know whose child it was, although she suspected it wasn't hers. Still, she just smiled back, metaphysical tears rolling down her face at the encounter.

Looking about the strange realm of dreams yet to come, she found thousands of similar tiny flickering lights, the dreaming of babes not yet born, some not yet conceived, and at how they were all balanced on a knife's edge down this new road she had constructed, and dark and silent down the other path.

She cried. She cried tears, and she cried out to all of them, "I promise you the stars and the sun! I promise you summer shade and winter auroras! I promise you!"

Thousands of tiny lights all flared brightly as unborn minds in the future dreamed of Skuld's voice, crying out in joy and curiosity and the images that filled their tiny minds before their ability to see yet had even formed. For those who still had a future, in their deepest, most soul felt dreams they would remember that voice and its promise.

They had been promised the stars.

The whole scene started to fade and Skuld said, "Let's go momma, they need their rest," nodding sagely before everything faded to black.

Skuld woke up shivering with fear and cold for a moment before the sun warmed her and hope renewed her. She lay naked under a thin sheet of black silk, Steb standing protectively over her, obviously having pulled her out of the pool before she risked drowning and covered her over.

Looking up at him, Skuld said mournfully, "Oh Steb, I still haven't figured out how to fix your throat…"

Steb just made a few intricate hand signs that said _You have given me back my life and my freedom. I owe you everything I have for that. I can live without speech a while longer. And you shall be busy goddess, very busy._

The distant sound of a foreign war horn made the warning very clear and real.


	63. Dancing the Charlie Foxtrot

**Chapter Sixty-two: Dancing the Charlie Foxtrot**

"I am going to torture that bitch _slowly _for this," Shar muttered as she observed the fortifications around the city that had literally _just _sprung up. They would be frustratingly difficult to escalade, although fortunately she had summoned up an entire tribe of shadow giants that worshipped her for this operation so they could assist in the siege.

"The time will come," Vhaeraun noted as the troops fell in, a mixture of light adapted drow from Myth Drannor under his banner and various worshippers of Shar gathered from the Plane of Shadow. By far the most numerous of them were the Shadovar, the Netherese descendents blinking somewhat from the light of the rising sun as they marched through the portals opened up. The act of stabilizing the surrounding magical fields to let the troops quickly gather drained the deities involved significantly as the whole area was racked with damage from whatever had happened in Silverymoon.

Stripped of the Shadow Weave, Shar had in fact begrudgingly starting using the regular Weave -fortunately still unsupervised- like most deities to provide her worshippers with magical energy when they were in range. It was irritating though.

Talona and Loviatar were both bringing in their own worshippers as well, and while the two deities didn't get along with each other, they were willing to work together with Shar between them in the hopes of getting a chance to stab the other in the back at some later point, and they both also had their own frustrations to work out.

Meanwhile Lolth had gathered up more drow from across the Underdark and moved them up near the surface, but while everyone else was being gathered they had to wait. The deities needed to work together on the next part.

Although evidently their foe _didn't _need help to pull of something much more impressive than what they were going to attempt to do, a fact that pissed off Shar and that Vhaeraun and the others quietly filed away for a later date.

Suddenly with rather little warning two of the shadow giants simply _exploded_, their chests caved in and their backs blown out in a shower of gore. A half second later horrific cracks filled the air from the direction of the fortifications, wisps of smoke curling up from each of the points of the stars closest to the forming army.

The results were somewhat predictable as assembling troops all began to panic, spooked by the sudden deaths. The leaders and the gods all began to bellow and shout, trying to restore order as the troops attempted to get away from whatever had just happened.

The terrain in front of the fortifications then began to bubble and shift, magic saturating it with water and turning it into a morass of mud. At that point a strangely amplified tapping sound kicked up from the fortifications and, with the sun rising behind them, a group of bards with strange kit led by a creature whose presence prickled at the senses of the gods began to sing.

"In a foreign field he lay  
Lonely soldier, unknown grave  
On his dying words he prays  
Tell the world of Paschendale

Relive all that he's been through  
Last communion of his soul  
Rust your bullets with his tears  
Let me tell you 'bout his years

Laying low in a blood filled trench  
Kill time 'til my very own death  
On my face I can feel the falling rain  
Never see my friends again

In the smoke, in the mud and lead  
Smell the fear and the feeling of dread  
Soon be time to go over the wall  
Rapid fire and the end of us all

Whistles, shouts and more gun fire  
Lifeless bodies hang on barbed wire  
Battlefield nothing but a bloody tomb  
Be reunited with my dead friends soon

Many soldiers eighteen years  
Drown in mud, no more tears  
Surely a war no-one can win  
Killing time about to begin

Home, far away  
From the war, a chance to live again  
Home, far away  
But the war, no chance to live again

The bodies of ours and our foes  
The sea of death it overflows  
In no man's land, God only knows  
Into jaws of death we go

Crucified as if on a cross  
Allied troops they mourn their loss  
German war propaganda machine  
Such before has never been seen

Swear I heard the angels cry  
Pray to god no more may die  
So that people know the truth  
Tell the tale of Paschendale

Cruelty has a human heart  
Every man does play his part  
Terror of the men we kill  
The human heart is hungry still

I stand my ground for the very last time  
Gun is ready as I stand in line  
Nervous wait for the whistle to blow  
Rush of blood and over we go

Blood is falling like the rain  
Its crimson cloak unveils again  
The sound of guns can't hide their shame  
And so we die on Paschendale

Dodging shrapnel and barbed wire  
Running straight at the cannon fire  
Running blind as I hold my breath  
Say a prayer symphony of death

As we charge the enemy lines  
A burst of fire and we go down  
I choke a cry but no-one hears  
Fell the blood go down my throat

Home, far away  
From the war, a chance to live again  
Home, far away  
But the war, no chance to live again

Home, far away  
From the war, a chance to live again  
Home, far away  
But the war, no chance to live again

See my spirit on the wind  
Across the lines, beyond the hill  
Friend and foe will meet again  
Those who died at Paschendale"

The song, amplified and carrying a psychic component that allowed understanding despite language barriers filled the minds of the mundane troops with horror at the thought of assaulting a fortified position fronted by muddy terrain. Worse yet, it also gave meaning and understanding, of a patching of muddy, cratered hell where _hundreds of thousands _of bodies had sunk to the bottom, waiting just beneath the surface to drag any who touch the water down to their doom.

The gods grit their teeth as they realized how brutally well planned this attack had been. The average mortal soldier was now terrified of attacking what with the demonstration of their magic in killing two of the giants and the gods were busy keeping the portals for their forces open. If they tried to attack the performance they would sever the connection early and leave half their forces behind, forcing a delay of nearly a day as the gods gathered their strength again. With their clerics and their mages throwing magic that was harmlessly diverted into the stone of the fort and absorbed, it made them look impotent.

Finally Loviatar managed to lash sufficient fear of the gods into the troops that they ceased running, although further death and injury amongst the ranks of the giants caused by further attacks had convinced them not to bunch in tight formations, something that drastically reduced their effectiveness in a siege.

Vhaeraun was left to grumble as his drow had been the ones most affected by the attack, the disciplined Shadovar managing to hold the highest degree of coherency, followed somewhat less so by Loviatar's people, as the images were somewhat extra disturbing for their point of view as the slaughter they perceived was often instant, relatively painless, and pointless, anathema to their philosophies.

Finally, after what seemed like forever the last of the troops under the combined banners of the gods exited their portals, having retreated significantly away from the walls, hiding in the forests from any more physical or mental attacks. Their prides stinging, the gods dropped their concentration on the portals and immediately began preparing their next attack.

* * *

"Dome of shadows… nice," Lars commented sarcastically as the light of the rising sun was blocked out. He then glanced over at one of the more unexpected additions to their forces. It seemed that several of the survivors of Menzoberranzan had managed to replicate one of the howitzers on their own, using their own resources. They didn't have many shells as none had been produced, but a few of the mages had managed to fabricate a few special rounds, having anticipated another day of construction rather than battle.

Glancing back at the forested area where the enemy had holed up for the moment, Lars said nonchalantly, "Illuminate their position."

* * *

The hours following the capture of the remains of Silverymoon had been _bad_ for anyone under Asmodeus, although most of his direct subordinates had managed to avoid the majority of his wrath as they had actually done what they were supposed to and it was only by the tiniest of fractions that they had missed the secondary target. For his part, Akrak had managed to keep his head and his position as his intelligence gathering had got them so close, even if close wasn't quite good enough.

For his part, Asmodeus had managed to get his temper back under control and turned his temper down to a low simmer. The raid, while politically costly amongst his subordinates for appearing to fail when it had his personal seal on it, had actually proved that the secondary target had been near by and there had been some other developments.

For example, the capture of Corellon Larethian. Asmodeus was sorely tempted to kill the god now and take his divinity, fulfilling one of Asmodeus' long term goals, but there were a few things holding him back. The first was that Asmodeus wasn't quite sure if he could handle greater god's chaotic portfolio. The second, more important issue, was that Ao tended to only concern himself with the activities of the gods and if Asmodeus elevated himself to godhood while taking time off from his assigned task that could result in him angering the overdeity while simultaneously putting himself under said deity's sphere of influence.

No, Asmodeus would wait for the moment, keeping the elven god imprisoned on Nessus and in reserve for a later date.

Asmodeus was about to ask on the search for the leader of this city, one of the Seven Sisters and thus another useful prisoner when Akrak ran up to him, prostrating himself immediately before the ruler of Hell. Unfortunately there was so much rubble and magic was so snarled in this area even if the ball of wild magic had subsided that scrying was still impossible.

Sneering down at his scout, Asmodeus snapped irritably, "Report."

"Of course my lord. Our scouts have detected a massive sphere of magical darkness impenetrable to even our eyesight around the location of Nesmé, the lead we were following before the events that drew us to Silverymoon. We now have exact coordinates, we can begin jumping in teleport troops at your command," Akrak reported quickly.

Asmodeus glared at his subordinate for a long time before he said, "We begin at once. Your scouts are to go through first."

"Of course," Akrak replied before he scurried away.

* * *

Lolth and her allies emerged from their Underdark tunnels into a nightmarish scene. The promised shroud of darkness was up, but there was still plenty of light to see in as someone had touched off an inferno within the moors. This late in the summer, much of the normal moisture had drained out of the wooded area and especially around the city the trees were dry enough to burn. The introduction of about a half dozen napalm shells had turned the refuge of the trees into a killing oven.

Lolth, more unhinged than usual since her disfigurement, cried out to the confused forces, "Charge!"

With pissed off deities behind them, a fire at their current position, and an unexpected fortress and strange magic in front of them, the assembled forces charged. Five hundred drow followers of Vhaeraun from Myth Drannor. Two thousand drow followers of Lolth and other members of her pantheon. A thousand soldiers from the Shade Enclave. Six hundred followers of Loviatar. Two hundred followers of Talona. A hundred demons seconded to Lolth from her Abyssal allies. Forty shadow giants. Dozens of miscellaneous other creatures.

The pitiless stone walls, illuminated by the burning of the forests, loomed larger as the forces moved closer, and continued to redirect and absorb spells, sucking up the majority of magical firepower. They were also silent, those hidden behind their walls waiting.

Then the front line troops hit the mud before the walls and the dying started. In three seconds every monk Loviatar had brought died, their superior speed only carrying them into the killing ground between the two prongs that flanked the main gate faster.

Interlocking cones of canister shot from six pound cannons and a specially modified Gatling gun turned flesh and bone to fine mist. The cannons only fired once while their crews reloaded, but the Gatling did not stop firing. It just went on and on and on, the machine magically enhanced to allow for theoretically _infinite _fire, and its incessant chatter of fire raked back and forth and side to side along the ranks of those charging the walls. Volley fire from rifles on either side added to the killing. Closely packed by the front ranks stalling and the rear ranks pressing forward, the bullets would occasionally rip through one body and maim the warrior behind.

Then the spiders showed up.

* * *

"Where did he get the hat?" Lars whispered to Rask as the two of them watched the battle before them, phase and shadow spiders ambushing soldiers at the periphery of the battle and dragging them off to other planes where battalions of sword and monstrous spiders waited to tear them apart and add to their larders for their brooding eggs.

Watching the battle with keen interest between the two of them was the system bug Think, inexplicably wearing an appropriately sized broad rimmed, purple hat with a bright orange feather. The bug seemed intently focused upon the battle playing out.

Rask, after summoning a swarm of alien spiders into the midst of several warrior-mages just shrugged and said, "I… ah… find it better not to ask, yes… yes…"

Lars shrugged. The assistance of Think and his harem of spiders were well appreciated and if the off kilter and more than a little crazy Rask didn't want to know, neither did Lars. Think then hopped off and neither tried to stop the strange creature or ask where he was going.

Rask then frowned and said, "Oh dear… one of the avatars… Selvetarm… yes… yes… is not reacting to the guns as hoped… no… no. I think he may… yes… yes he will reach the wall and…"

Lars was already loading one of his special rounds when he stopped in mid-action to gape in open mouthed awe at what happened next. The whole battle came to a ragged halt for a second as the observed the sudden events. Rask ran over to the far side of a wall and violently vomited over the edge, an act that was repeated by many.

An unofficial ten minute time out was called as all sides regained their will to live.

His face twisted up in mute horror, Lars finally said, "That explains a whole _lot _of questions, most of wish I now regret ever asking."

Crawling back to the wall, Rask asked fearfully, "Is… is it over?"

"Disgustingly enough, _yes_. A pity that won't work on any of the other gods, but then again I'm pretty sure the bug already has enough divine energy after _that_ as it is," Lars replied.

Peaking over the edge, Rask whimpered and then closed his eyes against the sight.

* * *

"For the first time in my existence I _truly_ pity my son," Vhaeraun muttered from the near lines where he and Shar were helping to maintain the spell of darkness over the battlefield.

Shar for her part was steaming and ranting at her followers to find Lolth and bring her over to their position so she could yell at her. What had that charge hoped to accomplish? They didn't even have proper ladders to mount an escalade!

As all sides finished emptying their stomachs, an act their gods did not blame them for, Lolth approached, a smile on her face and a balor at her side. Considering that there hadn't been any balors in her forces before…

"Most esteemed deities, Graz'zt sends his compliments in prosecuting your war against the devils and presents to you a myriad of twenty thousand demons to do with as you see fit," the balor replied smoothly.

There was a minor skip beat before all of the gods, including Lolth, all asked, "Wait, what devils?"

* * *

Lars just sort of stared as the situation unfolded before he turned to Rask and said, "There is a term for this in my culture. We call it a 'Tokyo-3', named after a battle that unfolded similar to something like this, only admittedly that was worse if less multi-faceted. Really though, I just want to ask _WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?_"

The decimated enemy formations had managed to limp back in between their retching, out of the overlapping killing fields of the fortifications and had just been bolstered by a small brigade of demons, only for tight, rigidly disciplined blocks of devils to appear out of literally nowhere and crash into the confused ranks. The darkened skies were filling up with flying fiends duelling in the confused melee.

Lars pinched his nose in exasperation before he said, "As commander, it behoves me to take responsibility for my troops. Thus, because some idiot will inevitably say it, or has already said it, let me go on record as taking the blame for this one. _It can't get any worse!_"

On cue a hail of arrows was launched from a section of forest not yet on fire, at a right angle to the current battle and thus out of the line of fire of most of their troops at the moment. The devastating barrage caught the skirmishers stationed in those sections unawares, killing dozens and forcing the rest into shelters.

"That would be the elves I encountered earlier today… how'd they _get _here?" Lars asked.

"Perhaps they ah… think with portals, yes… yes?" Rask suggested.

Lars then turned his head to the side and said, "Oh hey, look at _that!_ Several thousand orcs lead by an entire pantheon! _Where are these guys coming from? _Is the universe just pulling armies out of its ass to throw into this battle?"

The dome of shadows then began to waver and flicker, something disrupting its structure.

"Bets on what's next?" Lars asked.

"You… ah… you did draw attention from… ah… that crazy mage, yes… yes?" Rask asked.

The dome of shadows did not quite completely dispel as it had two deities pumping energy into it, but it did go from a starless midnight to an eerie twilight as the magic was severely drained by the latest player entering the game.

Approximately the size of a storm giant, the _thing _was composed of bands of gold wrapped around bundles of brilliant silver-white fire. Sitting at its heart was Marella, the insane mage from like _eight hours ago_.

"Okay, seriously universe, where are you getting all of this? I mean, there had better be some _incredible_ back story here that I'm not privy to," Lars cried at the heavens, shaking his fist impotently.

"Wouldn't it ah… need to be _credible_, yes… yes?" Rask pointed out.

"Shut up, I'm daring the universe for further amplification of this cluster fuck," Lars growled irately.

A balor landed in front of them.

"Okay, _this _I can deal with," Lars muttered before he pointed his shotgun at the demon and pulled the trigger, only to get a resounding _click_ as the hammer came down on nothing.

"Fuck."

* * *

"What the _fuck _is going on?" Shar cried out furiously as everything around them degenerated into chaos with devils suddenly crashing into their flanks, elves peppering all sides, and horde of orc barbarians attempting to get through to the elves by going through the drow, all while a mage that appeared to be inside a golem made of _silverfire _was stomping towards the enemy fortifications, its gold shod boots crushing everything beneath it and its very touch annihilating anything that stood in its way. Especially since it seemed to be sucking energy out of the Weave around it to power its construction, thus stripping many of their magical defences.

Oh, and then there was the actual enemy they were fighting.

"The elves I get, I brought them here… I'm still wondering on the devils but their presence and the demons seem to be related and they are counteracting each other so I'm not asking questions. The apparent incarnation of the instability of the Weave was already here and has a bug up her ass about something. The orcs I haven't a clue about, although I will admit they are surprisingly stealthy for a group their size," Vhaeraun summarized dryly.

"We will just have to turn this to our advantage," Shar replied, and the two schemers looked at each other slyly for a second.

"Oh Lolth…"

* * *

Yulois watched the slaughter all around him as his squad attempted to hold the line as nearly five times their number in orc barbarians assaulted the Shadovar position, the deadly weapons of Nesmé continuing to kill men all around them, although fire had focused upon the skies and the whirling clouds of fiends. It was somewhat depressing that generally the killing was directed at the Shadovar more than the orcs, although tactically it made sense to kill the guys who were _definitely _trying to kill you than the ones who were killing them. At least at first.

It was the same principle as why the strange silvery, flaming golem with the emaciated, burning woman at its core was left unmolested by the others as it stomped towards the fortifications. That and nothing seemed to work on it, magic dying away before it got close and normal weapons flashing away to smoke upon impact with the supernatural fires that composed the strange thing.

It seemed that the only way to stop the monster was to hit it with something that wasn't physical and yet wasn't magical either.

Finally seeing an opportunity as the orc assault ebbed away for a moment, Yulois cried out, "Fall back! We need to reform the line!"

As his men moved back, tightening up their ranks, Yulois pulled out a scroll that had been given to him for just this situation. Smiling grimly to his men, he said, "Special magic," before he began to whisper the final pieces of the spell contained upon the enchanted parchment.

Then, as the scroll was consumed by the shadow magic it contained, Yulois cried out, "For the goddess!"

His men had never known him to be a devout Sharran, but they supposed such a desperate battle had brought out the religious side of Yulois.

* * *

Marella cackled with glee as she waded across the battlefield, safely contained within her construct. She had long been working on the theories behind binding and warding, hence her discovery of the remnants within the Weave. This was merely an extension of that work and what the remnants had taught her. She had created another, smaller breach in the fabric of the Weave but had contained it within the wards she had constructed, giving it shape and definition. Most golems were guided by bound spirits, but by binding her _own _spirit, if temporarily, she gave direction and intelligence to her creation. True, she sacrificed her spellcasting while bound, but then again she didn't need spells when she was just this powerful.

Reaching the walls of the fortification her most _hated _of enemies hid behind, she went to drag the fingers of her construct across the surface of the stone, to obliterate what stood in her way, only for the fire of her golem to swirl away into the walls, greedily sucked up like water in a desert. Recoiling lest all her energy dissipate into the stone, she hissed in fury.

How dare that _bastard_ try and foil her again! Insolent male!

Inhaling deeply, she exhaled out a plume of pure silverfire in a display that would make ancient dragons envious. Hiding behind their damnable wall, the defenders peppering her with attacks avoided the majority of the damage, but the soil around the wall was not afforded such protection and was immediately consumed… revealing more of that magically absorbent and infernally strong stone hidden underneath.

Marella couldn't even begin to guess how deep the fortifications might go, but she had an itching suspicion that the bitch that had constructed this had sent the pillars of this construct all the way down to the deepest parts of the Underdark. It also explained the immense capacity for absorbing magic.

Grunting, Marella decided to do things the hard way. Stomping through the mud, the golden boots of the silverfire golem keeping it from simply sinking into the ground and continuing down forever, Marella made for the main gate. Ignoring the ineffectual attacks of the defenders, she brought back a single foot and then slammed it hard into the door.

The main structure of the fortress was a single piece of stone of great thickness, with no fault lines or points of attack. The moving parts, like the gates, were a part of the overall structure in the same way, and thus had far less of a capacity to absorb magic and resist blows. This was only relatively speaking of course, but when kicked by a golem made out of raw wild magic…

With a titanic ringing sound like the biggest gong ever being struck and a crack like a piece of the Great Glacier tumbling away in the spring, Marella put a huge fissure in the main gate.

Revenge would be hers! At long last!

* * *

Clinging desperately to the neck of the balor that had attacked him, about the only 'safe' point on the damn thing, for relative terms of 'safe', Lars watched in horror as that psychotic mage attacked the fortifications Skuld had built and began to kick in the front gate. Unfortunately, with a demon's claws digging into him, struggling to get purchase while Lars tried to dig out its brain with his tentacles, he was a little preoccupied.

And while he doubted the enigmatic mercenary would even get close to the insane beast, Shyft too was pretty busy, running a marilith through with his lance while a pair of vrocks tried to pry his armour off to reveal the hidden squishy being within, putting their primary anti-golem warrior out of commission.

Even with the Gatling pouring everything it had into the construct it didn't seem to be doing any good, and it often had to switch back to a crude anti-aircraft weapon as the demons attacked the walls from above. Already the defenders were hard pressed and taking losses to the fliers and teleporters.

Then Lars and the balor both paused for a moment as a new enemy entered the battlefield.

"What the…?" They both asked in confusion. The demon because it had never seen anything quite like that before.

Lars because he never expected to see a _battlemech _on the battlefield.

* * *

Washal the Pale rode in the holy construct, the fruits of the labour of the magical Whispered gathered together. Most of them had been working on various other projects already, it was just with this newly discovered bond and information, they had discovered an idea within their heads that they began to work towards. While not much of a warrior, a mage was needed to activate most of the machine's functions.

Emerging from the portal conjured by Brother Yulois, Washal immediately discovered the nightmare war zone that was the field outside Nesmé. The scene was darkened by shadow magic, but illuminated by the burning of the forests and the occasional flash of thunder from a storm growing overhead. Combatants warred in all directions, and the dead were strewn in piles of dozens, sometimes _hundreds, _of bodies. Demons and devils battled in the skies, creating a light rain of multi-coloured blood and ichor.

But worst of all, there was some sort of burning golem that had just managed to kick down the main gates in a shower of black stone chips. Triggering a wand, Washal pumped a powerful fireball into a specially designed magical chamber originally designed as a sort of smaller mythallar to replace the normal ones that the enclave had been unable to replicate for nearly seventeen hundred years for unknown reasons.

Now it captured the magical heat. Heat was light. Light could be ordered, could be transformed from a sphere into a cylinder.

Clumsily raising the mechanical arm to the construct, Washal relied on the magical targeting system to line up his shot. Putting the reticule right on the centre of mass for the thing assaulting the goddess' territory, Washal pulled the trigger.

The air crackled with the sound and smell of lightning as the powerful beam of coherent light excited and ionized the air before slamming into the golem and punching into the swirling forces that composed it, burning through to Marella's personal wards where the beam flared and died, breaking on her shields.

"Oh dear," Washal noted as he hopped over the Shadovar ranks and kicked and kneed his machine awkwardly through the hordes of orcs as the silverfire golem picked itself up off the ground.

* * *

Johan stumbled out of the rubble of the destroyed door, many of the other combat engineers having died in the shower of shrapnel after the final blow when the gate finally collapsed. Blood pouring into his right eye from a cut on his forehead, limping from a sprained ankle caused by rolling out of the way, he stumbled out into the open, disoriented.

The main gate had been smashed open. This was not good. Already the enemy armies were starting to surge forward through the chaos and confusion, probably more out of a desire to be _inside _the fortifications when the next bit of shit hit the windmill.

Lightning cracked across the unnaturally darkened sky, a massive thundercloud having moved in, perhaps the foul weather attracted by the foul activities occurring below.

Looking about for a weapon, anything, Johan spied a fallen rifle. He wasn't yet proficient with the weapons, but he had worked with building them enough that he had some basic knowledge of how to load and fire one. And at least it had a bayonet on it, the poor bastard who had last held it having evidently been gutted by a demon and then tossed over the wall.

Picking up the rifle and leaning on it like a crutch, Johan watched that hateful construct rush off to attack the strange, dark golem with the funny magical lightning gun that had appeared and attacked it.

Bitch.

Searching for some ammunition, Johan discovered a single cartridge, the bullet unfortunately torn out leaving only the powder and the percussion cap. Grunting, he shoved it down the gun before he focused on transforming the shadows within the barrel into something more solid.

Leaning up against the smooth wall for support, Johan painfully lined up on the retreating golem's back. He then whispered, "Fuck you," before he pulled the trigger. There was a slight splash of shadows as the round impacted, but nothing else.

Grunting, Johan began to limp back inside, his futile message sent, unaware of what he had done.

* * *

While a spider with _far _too many limbs ripped into the back of a babau demon, Lars struggled to finish tearing the head off a glabrezu, the dead and dying all around, while he burned with power. He was absorbing massive amounts of emotional energy from all around, fuelling greater and greater heights of bloodlust.

Then, almost as a counter-point to the frenzied wailing of the battle, a low whistle that simultaneously rumbled like distant thunder could be heard, drifting just within the range of hearing of all of those around.

"Yippee-yi-ya, yippee-yi-yo…" the winds whispered mournfully, sending a shiver through Lars'.

The heavens opened with a massive torrent of rain, the opening barrage as flaming horsemen charged down out of the thundercloud that had settled over the battlefield. Theirs chains cracking the air like the thunder that accompanied the beat of their horse's hooves on the air, they crashed into the flying demons and devils, although by sheer numerical odds they hit fought the demons far more than the devils.

Across the battlefield thousands began to tremble and cower at the song of the Ghost Riders, including the fiends. Unfortunately, while this took the slack off the defenders as the lesser demons began to break in panic, so too did the devils start to lose the coherence of their formations, which meant that they no longer kept the now panicked drow and Shadovar forces properly contained.

With burning horsemen singing songs of doom above them, devils behind them, and the gates to Nesmé cracked open in front of them, the massive force began to stampede straight for the city. The avatars of the various gods managed to exert small pools of order, but mostly they just directed their troops towards the breach in a more organized fashion.

Finally twisting off the head of the demon, Lars watched as the Gatling slaughtered hundreds but failed to overcome the panic. There were just too many for their tiny numbers to overcome. Sheer terror was going to carry the enemy into the city on momentum instead of discipline.

This was going to be bad.

* * *

Kirilae stood in front of the academy along with several of the combat instructors and some of the older students. There had originally been layers of defence, but as the battle got worse more and more of the defenders were sent to the walls to try and deal with the catastrophe. Some of the demons had already tried to bypass the walls, but strangely devils had made extra effort to draw them off, so the final line of defence for the children remained unmolested.

Her sword out in front of her, Kirilae drew a line in the mud on the cobble stones cried out, "This is where we stand! This is where we fight! We fight for the future! For all of us who never thought tomorrow would be better than today, we fight for the future. If we yield here, then all is lost. So we fight as if there is no tomorrow, for there _is _no tomorrow for us! Tomorrow is for our _children! _So let us carve our memorial into the hearts of our enemies! Let them look upon what we protect and shy away for fear we will return for them!"

She could see the enemy coming, panic in their eyes. Orcs, humans, her fellow drow, all terrified of what lay behind them as they boiled out of the fortifications, their momentum having already overwhelmed the defenders within.

Johan was in there, somewhere.

Her sword held low, Kirilae let the flat of the blade protect the line she had drawn. It would not be the only thing she would do to protect it.

* * *

Washal discovered much to his chagrin that while he was faster than the enemy golem and that while his own construct would not shut down in the presence of the anti-magic field that surrounded the strange thing his magically initiated weapons and piloting aids were nullified, and his inexperience meant that he often stumbled, letting it get far closer than he would have liked, resulting in frequent loss of many of his systems.

Fortunately the burning golem had yet to get within clinching distance, at which point Washal was confident the fight would be all over for him.

Lurching out away from the enemy and tripping, rolling over a mob of panicked orcs that had got too close to the duelling titans and squashing them flat, adding to the already impressive paint of gore if also obscuring the view screen once again, Washal frantically ran backward, only barely in control as he nearly tripped over a squad of drow raiders.

For a second magic returned and the minor cleaning spell bound to the glassteel window cleared the gore, letting him gaze out on the world and the fact that he had not opened up as much space as he would have hoped and that he had also managed to back himself up against impassable terrain, with a cliff on two sides and a forest to the left. He could probably navigate through the forest, but not quickly enough to evade the silverfire golem. He also would not have enough time to arm his weapons.

Before the enemy golem could charge him a log, really more of an uprooted tree actually, emerged from the forest and smashed into the magical construct. While the majority of the projectile was immediately annihilated, a significant chunk of its mass made contact with one of the magically strengthened gold bands containing the raw magic first, which knocked the golem to the side awkwardly, just as it was unbalanced before a charge but before it had built up momentum.

From the forest that hemmed him in, an absolutely vicious looking creature as large as the combatants, if not more so, stood. It had vaguely blended mammalian, reptilian, and avian features. It had pebbled scale skin mottled an earthy-yellow and forest green colour to create a subtle camouflage pattern ideal for temperate wooded areas. Its feet were three toed talons while its arms were long and grasping, ending in a pair of clawed fingers with a smaller thumb seemingly tacked to manipulate things. Atop its head it had long, almost feathery hair done up into a series of dreadlocks, which quite nicely framed the massive shovel maw that had more teeth than… than…

The closest metaphor Washal could come up with was that it had more teeth than the Harpell Family, whom Washal had met once while travelling the planes.

Roaring with seemingly impossible volume, the bizarre creature heralded the arrival of swarms of smaller bestial creatures. There were tigers and wolves and boars and…

Washal suddenly figured out the identity of this faction. There must have been hundreds of lycanthropes pouring out of the woods, the giant being one of the stranger examples that occasionally showed up. That many lycanthropes, especially the savage ones like werewolves, could only mean one deity.

Malar.

Running his machine out of the little entrapment he had dug for himself while the enemy golem tried to get its feet again, Washal put a good amount of distance between himself and the golem before he took stock of the magic he had remaining.

Out of fireballs. Damn.

The fireball trick was the only weapon they had actually tested out so far, the Whispered having rushed their creation into the field when it was discovered that their goddess was threatened. They had one other experiment to try. Washal activated the lightning cannon in the opposite arm. They weren't quite how many hits from a wand of lightning it would take to get it up to full power. So Washal just kept triggering the wand until something happened.

Finally after throwing three lightning bolts into the resonating chamber the whole system hit its limit and exploded, shredding Washal's left hand as the entire arm of the machine was turned to shrapnel, but not before unleashing a massive ball of electricity at the silverfire golem. A ball of electricity that washed over it, damaging the gold containment rings and completely snapping one that was around an arm raised in instinctive defence.

The silverfire golem staggered, now spewing uncontrolled magic that arced to the nearest source of magical grounding… namely the still intact containment bands, paralyzing the construct as it began to consume itself. Long loops of silverfire, similar to a certain structure Washal remembered from his dreams and that he thought of as 'poles' began to writhe across the surface of the golem, stacking up and becoming increasingly dangerous looking.

There was also now an ugly, unnatural colour tainting the light of the silverfire, something that told of a rot that had already been growing in the golem, only now it was unleashed from the restraints that kept it in check.

Washal, despite the blood loss making him woozy, figured that now was an exceedingly good time to run. The lycanthropes that hadn't already run into the city in pursuit of prey also seemed to take up the idea that it would be a good idea to escape.

* * *

Kirilae was the last one alive, out of defender and attacker, the bodies piled up knee deep all around her as she and her fellows cut down everything that came at them, unafraid of death while their foes were terrified of the doom in the song that the Ghost Riders sang. But now she was out of spells and only by kneeling and leaning on her sword could she stay upright. She was spent, down to her last nubbin of life.

Looking up, she discovered a new foe towering over her now, a grotesque hybrid of human and animal: a werewolf. There was an entire pack of them and stranger creatures before her, sniffing at all the blood and carnage about them. Their yellowed, evil eyes looked at her hungrily.

Kirilae struggled to her feet, her whole body shaking with the effort, the dozens of wounds that had penetrated her shadow silk armour bleeding freely with the exertion, but she still stood, shivering with blood loss and the soaking from the thunderstorm, but still defiant, the line before her uncrossed.

One of the creatures looked like it was about to pounce when a grey and red blur struck it from behind, barrelling it down. Some sort of strange amalgam of lupine, feline, and apish features had landed on the creature and began ripping it apart, adding more blood to its filthy fur. It was nominally grey furred except for its head, which was a brilliant crimson colour.

Spitting the severed spinal column out, the beast looked at the now cowed werewolves and screamed, "_Two commandments! Two! _Use your noses and leave this one be! Suitable prey beckons!"

Tails between their legs the werewolves ran off while their monstrous leader peered down at Kirilae while she stared back at it defiantly and said, "Cross the line."

Cackling a psychotic hyena laugh, the creature said, "I _like _you drow. You would do well in my church."

Cluing in that she was confronted with the avatar of a particularly savage deity, Kirilae replied defiantly, "Not interested, I have my own goddess."

Snickering, the god said, "Yes, Lolth has you all whipped well, I will give her that."

"The little bitch hasn't served me for a long time, I can tell you that," an imperious voice replied.

Kirilae turned her head slowly while the bestial god snapped his head about like a wild dog, they both discovered a single breasted drow woman surrounded by psychotic clerics who had clearly been recently similarly maimed.

"Malar… I was not informed that you were expected… then again neither was I informed about many of the others who showed up," Lolth sneered.

Sniffing the air, Malar said then pulled something out of… somewhere… and held it up. It was a brass cartridge for a .50 rifle. He then growled, "What do you know about _this_?"

"It was used to maim me, by the same god that the bitch before you worships," Lolth replied in disgust and wrath.

A look of realization followed by seething anger settled over Malar and he said, "You… you _tricked me! _You used your son to taunt me, to get me to chase your prey. We were _allies!_"

Lolth shrugged and said, "Shar was giving me a better deal and she didn't think you would play well with her friend Loviatar. Besides, what do I care for your bruised ego?"

Malar's eye twitched and his lips curled back from his razor sharp teeth. "I'll _kill_ you bitch."

Lolth smiled smugly before she said, "My children and Loviatar would beg to differ."

A third voice joined in and said, "Actually… Gruumsh and his pantheon managed to follow you in, Vhaeraun and Shar didn't manage to distract them enough for some reason. So _mother_, it looks like it's you, me, and the very effective killer to sort it out at close quarters."

Eilistraee emerged from the shadows and smiled smugly.

Lolth looked around her and discovered that she did not have the support she thought she did. "I'll castrate that bastard son of mine!"

"You won't get the chance," Malar noted as he charged, his worshippers following behind to attack Lolth's followers while Eilistraee leapt into the fray, her bastard sword flashing.

Kirilae just tried to crawl away from the confrontation.

* * *

The badly damaged golem exploded, sending a wave of silverfire in every direction while the burning point that was where Marella's heart once resided became the focus point of the damage caused by Johan mixing silverfire and shadow magic. When the two forces of the two Weaves mixed in their pure forms, bad things happened to the fabric of the planes. Upon initial impact a tiny rift was formed, but then it was pulled into the wards of the golem and contained, yet fed by the raw, wild magic, making it stronger, sending the damage deeper and deeper into the underlying strata of the universe.

When it finally all went off, Marella found that she was floating in free space above a massive, spherical crater gouged out by the explosion, unable to move as her body began to implode upon a single point, lines of magic seeping further and further into the hole in reality.

She whimpered when a massive tentacle erupted from her chest, burning with silverfire but simultaneously perverting and polluting the magic that destroyed it as it was consumed. The remnants in her mind scrambled to escape for the most part, but one of them screamed in fury and frustration.

She had been so close!

With an almost sighing burp Marella was drawn into the rapidly expanding fissure in reality, her body pulped as it was practically sucked through a straw while her soul was lost to the distorting lines of the Weave, turned into a remnant like those she had discovered.

Surrounded by silverfire that was rapidly curdling from the unnatural energies and laws seeping out, the strange, three-dimensional fractal crack began to expand. From the other side of the crack a colossal eye opened, peering through to a place as equally strange to its perceptions as its home was to the creatures of the Realms.

The creature from the Far Realm reached an inquiring limb -to describe it as anything more detailed than a limb was impossible due to a lack of common reference words- and picked up a stunned Shadovar soldier, hauling him back within to examine. The screaming did not stop once the unfortunate passed the threshold of the rift.

* * *

Everything was falling apart. Lars could feel the immense amount of damage to space and time, and that it was impossible to stop the cracks from spreading from this side and he had not the power or the knowledge to repair it from the other side. He doubted anyone here did.

The Realms were doomed. The thin bubble surrounding them, protecting them from the hostile void that existed between realities had been pierced, and now there was a general undoing of the laws that governed all the things that allowed regular life to exist.

Lars, and by extension Gunnhild, would treat such a nightmare realm as home, but no one else could. Lars could protect one or two beings, but he already knew who his only choice was. He just had to find Skuld before…

His cry echoed across the multiverse of the Realms, carried psychically with the full power a communications daemon could muster. For most, the strange message caused all activity everywhere to cease as they tried to discern the message.

"_DON'T!_" Lars cried out.

He watched helplessly as Skuld, hammer out and Noble Umbra fully manifested, shadows swirling about her so thickly she was dark as night, flew into the widening crack and disappeared. A few seconds later with an anti-climatic pop so too did the portal to the Far Realm.

Lars stood in shock for a long moment before he found the trigger to his gun.

He turned to the people he had just a few seconds ago been willing to abandon to a horrific death and said, "Everything that isn't on our side dies."


	64. Sierra November

**Chapter Sixty-three: Sierra November**

Asmodeus sat quietly at the massive table constructed out of debris for the occasion, trying to keep the sneer and disdain off his face. He had _one _chance to salvage some of this situation, and if his dignity had to take a little hit, then so be it. It was preferable to getting smeared across the multiverse by a pissed off Ao when he gave his report.

Then again the charms dangling about the host's wrist demanded particular respect as well.

It wasn't every day a being of the universe spurned divinity not once but _three times_ in a single day.

Loviatar, Ghaunadaur, and Bahgtru, all slain. All within an hour. All by a single being. And instead of taking their portfolios said being had condensed their divine essence into marble sized beads that now adorned his wrist as simple charms.

The desire of many, Asmodeus included, hung like grapes, ripe for the plucking if not for the fact that it was a dangerous task to take from such a being as the Elder Evil whose presence they now waited upon.

* * *

_He did not stop, did not pause to mock, his brass face blank and inexpressive right up to the moment where he towered over Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain trying to push her intestines back into the holes carved by the shotgun blast to her gut. Lars had inclined his head ever so slightly before he said, "__**My race was **_**born **_**of pain**_**.**_**"**_

_The goddess Loviatar could only scream as his mask opened with the sound of tortured metal tearing apart before the tentacles speared through her body and lifted her up over the maw before in a spray of blood and bone she was consumed, body and soul_.

_But not divinity, for Lars spat that back out, disdaining the power… and the control. He recognized his limits and refused the influence of the portfolio, instead coating it in a layer of Warp Matter to seal it up, creating a sort of divine pearl._

_It would not be the first one he created that day._

* * *

There were others at the table, and while Asmodeus wished he could ignore them, he could not. Not even the mortals. An arm in a sling and one of his eyes gouged out, Governor-General Thrakka Oathsworn still somehow managed to look proud and defiant for a mortal surrounded by the avatars of deities and an Archdevil. Then again considering who he had backing him, the mortal had the right to look defiant.

Definitely a mortal to look into having some of his agents corrupt later.

Then there were the remnants of the gods, who generally looked less proud and confident than the mortal in attendance, probably because in the balance they had come off far worse for the wear fighting against the nation Thrakka represented. Oh sure, the majority of the divine deaths had been inflicted by other outsiders, but still…

On one side of the table were Gruumsh and his brood, now diminished by the loss of his son Bahgtru having been slain by their host and the orc necromantic god Yurtrus being killed by the drow necromantic goddess Kiaransalee. However, their family was also strengthened by Luthic, the only female orc deity, having backstabbed Talona at an opportune moment and increased her own affinity for poisons and diseases considerably.

* * *

_Lars had ended the argument with a single shotgun blast that removed the orc berserker god's head right in front of his family. Cold and emotionless, Lars had asked the other orcs as the new divine pearl formed on the chain about his wrist, "__**You can calm the fuck down or you can join the corpse cooling on the ground there. Your choice.**__"_

* * *

Then there were Malar and Eilistraee, the two glaring daggers at each other yet seated next to each other and opposite the orc pantheon. The two of them were covered in wounds from their fight with Lolth, but seemed to hate each other less than they hated the orcs. Eilistraee because orcs and elves didn't exactly get along, and Malar because he pretty much hated everything, just some things less than others.

Plus the two of them had weirdly bonded from the experience of divvying up Lolth's portfolio.

* * *

_The battle was quick but brutal, none of the gods capable of bringing any great magic to bear with the Weave so out of control and now contaminated with alien energies. In close combat, while experienced she wasn't a match for the much more martial minded Malar and Eilistraee, especially with one on either side of her. She dodged Malar's first pounce only to receive a slash to the thigh from her daughter. This in turn gave the Beastlord the chance to dig a clawed hand into the wounded leg, slowly Lolth down even further._

_Then Eilistraee ran her mother threw, her bastard sword plunging through Lolth's sternum and emerging out the other side, having pierced her heart, a lung, and severed her spine in the process. For good measure Malar then bit into her lower back and disembowelled her with his claws before Eilistraee lopped off Lolth's head._

_It was almost anticlimactic, the end of thousands of years of loose alliance for one and seething hatred for the other._

_And yet, neither bickered as they divvied up Lolth's portfolio, neither particularly interested in certain bits that the other desired and thus despite despising each other, the process was quick and without bickering. Eilistraee took the drow and trickery bits, Malar the evil and assassins, who were really just a specialized sort of hunter, and each took a bit of the darkness and chaos._

_Then, before either could think about turning on the other a reverberating voice had said, "__**Okay, you finished off the bitch for me, and neither of you seems to have actually attacked my people **_**yet **_**so I'll let you live if you come quietly.**_"

* * *

And then Asmodeus, or rather one of his avatars, he wasn't limited like the current gods were, had arrived to bolster his forces from those damned riders. The pestiferous creatures were incredibly hard to kill and could quite easily terrify lower level fiends into running if there wasn't a high ranking leader there to bolster them against the supernatural effects of their song. And thus now he sat here, the primary objective having escaped but the unimaginably dangerous secondary objective now ready to negotiate with him.

It almost grated on Asmodeus that he had to negotiate, but he was too smooth an operator not to know when he had to take the subtle route and back down a little. Any being that could slaughter gods was not one that Asmodeus wanted to engage directly when negotiation and corruption remained valid options.

Especially after he learned that the primary objective had _married _the secondary objective and they had apparently already had some sort of child. If he could bring those two before Ao he might still be able to come out of this ahead… or at least break even.

Asmodeus _never _lost.

Of course though he had been placed at the opposite end of the table from where their host would sit, ostensibly because his devils had been the only ones to have _helped _in the battle and therefore he deserved the most respect, but in reality it was just to sandwich the lawful fiend between the mass of chaotic gods and thus annoy him.

Then the unseen woodwinds and percussion instruments picked up, beginning a bombastic march that _oozed _imperialism and grandeur and their host arrived, and Asmodeus had to admit that he would have applauded the exquisite showmanship of their host if such an act were of so little dignity as to be beneath him.

He would quietly try and steal the music though; it made for a grand entry.

Their host, Lars, was clearly quite pissed, the malevolence quite literally radiating off of him as a halo of light that did not have any named colours as part of its spectrum. His once near featureless brass mask had become dark and corroded, nearly black, and twisted into a fearsome death's head. A long dark jacket made out of some indefinable, half decayed substance flowed behind him on an unfelt wind like a great cloak or the wings of some shadowy figure, tarnished piping of crimson and gold accentuating the grandeur while also simultaneously increasing his horribleness.

And then there were the little touches, like the breathing. He did not actually need to breathe, not even technically to talk, but accompanying him was a slow, rhythmic hiss and rattle of breathing, asynchronous with anything else he did. It was sound most mortals would find highly disturbing, and Asmodeus had to admit that staring at the divine essences kept on the creature's wrist the impact was brought to him all little as well, although since he had an avatar and wasn't there physically, it was a little less scary.

For the sound was like the laboured breathing of a mortal just before death, its rhythm reminding you that death approached a little closer with each heartbeat. Asmodeus could feel the bundle of souls that composed this creature, and he could feel how it grew a little stronger with each second as those who knew of it focused their attentions upon it.

This Elder Evil _was _death; it would come for mortals with simple time, and it would come personally for immortals if need be.

Sitting down in a chair next to the only mortal at the negotiating table, surprisingly a _lower _chair, Lars gazed out over the assembled gods, his breathing slowly hissing in and out, the only sound that could be heard until Thrakka coughed lightly and said, "I thank Marshal Lars for volunteering as the Sergeant-at-Arms for these proceedings."

Gruumsh erupted to his feet and cried out, "What? We are to negotiate with _you?_"

Lars turned his head and stared at the enraged orc deity, just inhaling and exhaling until the thoroughly unnerved deity slumped back to his seat. No one else dared comment on the embarrassing encounter though, lest they get the same treatment.

Thrakka nodded and said, "Yes, these proceedings are to be official negotiations between the nation of Noctis and your respective parties, thus as the head of state it is my responsibility to be the one here talking with all of you, as the respective heads of your own _states_, much as I use the term loosely to refer to your divine and infernal realms."

"You are a mortal who sits amongst gods and devils. What can you hope to achieve?" Asmodeus asked, politely in that the question only had a _drop _of condescension and arrogance to it.

Thrakka grinned and said, "I may be mortal, but I have something greater behind me."

Malar, in a more human form, cackled lightly and said, "You might think that creature is your pet, but I would say the situation is reversed."

Lars tilted his head to the side slowly before he said slowly and deliberately, "Thrakka enjoys my support because it makes both of us stronger." Fingering one of the divine pearls about his wrist, he then asked, "If you don't believe me we can play a game of 'who's the better killer' and we can sort things out like that."

Malar bared his fanged teeth but slunk back like a whipped dog at the rebuke. He was savage but he wasn't an idiot and he knew a meaner killer when he met one.

Smiling with the utter confidence of a beggar who held the cards at a banker's game of poker, Thrakka replied, "I was not imply the good marshal, but the nation itself, of which Lars is but a citizen. A powerful and extremely well respected citizen, but he is no king, no god."

His speech still completely unrelated to his breathing, Lars replied, "All are equal before the law."

"Including all of you," Thrakka declared smoothly.

The chaotic deities were all distinctly discomforted by this declaration, but despite the chaotic nature of these people, they were also things he could relate to better than the scatterbrained idiots with power unbefitting them that surrounded him.

"As heads of state you are afforded a certain amount of diplomatic immunity, and as none of you or your followers took _direct_ action to provoke a state of war, we will remain civil and polite, but if you break so much as a single of our laws you will be ejected from our territory with all necessary force and retaliation brought upon your people. The purpose of these negotiations is to determine what we shall do with you and your followers," Thrakka explained before he pulled out a sheet of paper.

"We are drafting a document we call a _constitution_, which is a document that details laws for laws and how to go about _changing _those laws via the agreement of the people who shall be living under those laws," Thrakka explained.

"I am but an instrument of the enforcement of those laws," Lars explained.

Asmodeus shuddered slightly inside. These people understood that the _law was the law_, but to _change _the law? And upon the whims of _mortals_? Adherence to the law was all well and good, but there needed to be an arbitrator who created those laws. A dictator whose word was supreme. Anything else was chaos and madness.

"While technically the goddess Skuld sits at the top of the hierarchy of Noctis, she has constitutionally ceded all powers of state and government to the governor-general and parliament, respectively. And while _practically_ it would be impossible to try her for breaches of the law, she too is governed by the same laws. This brings up a rather interesting point as part of the first clause in the constitution. Namely the guarantee of religious freedom," Thrakka explained, grinning at the deities around him.

"Skuld sits at the top of the organization chart of the nation, but we are not _required _to worship her. All who request the right of worship will be allowed _provided _their organization remains a lawful entity. The sacrifice of intelligent beings is strictly against the law, as is the declaration of war by an organization directly associated with your worship. In short, you are all here to argue for why we should not ban worship of your churches," Thrakka replied smugly.

He then turned to the orc pantheon and said, "There is a large contingent of orcs amongst our population who are still attached to their old gods but who both feel honour bound to work with us because of aid rendered to them and because of the improved standard of living. It would be a pity to ban your worship… but far too many of them respect us more than your church because frankly we hit harder than you do."

Gruumsh crushed a section of the table within his hands but a gaze from Lars prevented him from leaping over the table to disembowel the insolent hobgoblin. Strangely it was Luthic who spoke up in his stead and asked, "So long as we obey your laws our people are free to do as they wish?"

The male orcs looked at the only female member of their pantheon in shock at her insolence at speaking up, but Thrakka merely smiled and nodded, saying, "The laws are the boundaries of behaviour, not prescriptions for living."

"Orcs are better than you, stronger than you. Our hearths are a rock upon which you shall break," the patron of orc mothers declared.

"Woman…" Gruumsh began.

"The law sees no discernment between man and women beyond the merely biological and rejects the concept of one being having absolute control over another. If you strike Luthic within our territory you will be criminally liable for assault and thus forced to leave due to unlawful behaviour. All force necessary shall be used," Lars replied coldly.

There was a pause before Gruumsh growled, "You would tell me how to treat my own woman?"

"Yes," Lars stated. The statement hung in the air for a long time.

Malar giggled before he said, "I like you. You pretend to have airs of civility, but you are all animals inside. You know that the only laws are the ones enforced via might."

Lars turned to the Beastlord and said, "Yes. We are all animals; the only difference is that we've far, _far _more vicious than you. Your packs number in the dozens without your direct guidance, ours number in the thousands because unlike you we aren't all trying to kill each other. If you or your followers kill one of us we will march on you as one, thousands against one and no matter how strong, we will kill you and place your skinned hides in front of our fires in our dens, secure and happy in our homes while the survivors of your people huddle in the wasteland we will create of your forests and plains. We are worse than animals; we are killers and destroyers when provoked. Do not provoke us."

Coughing lightly, Thrakka said, "Yes, quite, although I do request that if the two of you wish to discuss the philosophies of civilization versus the wild you take it elsewhere. That said, because your followers prevented an attack on our children, we are considering erecting a statue to you Malar, provided your church is declared a lawful organization."

"Any laws but 'kill or be killed', 'leave the young and pregnant for the next generation', and 'make your kills clean to keep your prey strong and healthy' are beneath me. And I have no need of statues," Malar growled disdainfully.

Thrakka's face was deadpan for a moment before he said, "You play nice with us or we start killing your followers on sight, if those terms are simple enough for you."

"I can start with you if you choose to decline the offer," Lars added on.

Malar seemed to deflate and pout before he barked, "Fine."

Thrakka looked over at the silent glaring match between Gruumsh and his wife before Gruumsh snarled, "Your terms are acceptable. We shall obey your laws."

Thrakka then turned to Eilistraee and said, "As for you… well here we have an interesting case. On the one hand you are associated with the main elven pantheon, which we are currently at war with for attacking our forces, including our marshal. On the other hand, neither you nor your followers _personally _attacked us and you helped kill an enemy of the state. We have a sizeable drow population, and with the rest of the drow pantheon declared unlawful organizations, you are the only native deity they can turn to."

Eilistraee glared at Lars and said, "You wounded my father and caused him to be captured by devils." She then turned her glare on Asmodeus.

Lars shrugged and replied, "_He _attacked _me_, not the other way around. Everything I did was in self-defence."

Asmodeus replied dismissively, "He is still alive."

Eilistraee looked at Thrakka and Lars and said, "You are both petty tyrants in the making, what with your insistence upon so many _laws_. You would allow evil to sit at your table so long as it does not break one of your precious _laws_."

"We would, we do, and we _will_," Thrakka answered firmly. "The laws might be crafted to protect and serve the people, but they care not whether the people are good or evil. In fact, they do not care _at all._ They do not care if you are young or old, rich or poor, strong or weak, male or female, elf or orc. They will run over you if you break them, and they will set you free if you obey them. They will set you free from fear and tyranny. They will ensure that workers will work and employers will pay. They will ensure good roads and clean water for drinking and washing. They will ensure peaceful nights and safe days, whether nocturnal or diurnal. If the evil are so arrogant that they break the law, then they have made the decision to reject the prosperity the law offers, and we call those people _idiots_. And we shall grind them beneath our heels."

There was a long pause, the gods all shifting uncomfortably. They didn't like at _all_ what they were hearing. There were various republics across Faerun, but none with quite so much… _ambition._

Lars then whispered something to Thrakka and the hobgoblin smiled like a shark at Asmodeus.

The ruler of the Nine Hells did not like that look on a mortal.

"Asmodeus, you have Corellon Larethian prisoner, correct?" Thrakka asked.

"Yes…" Asmodeus replied casually. He had already admitted it and the elves already knew, so there was no point lying.

"How does Loviatar's portfolio sound for custody of him, and a little extra?" Thrakka asked.

There was stunned silence all across the table before Asmodeus slowly asked, "What else extra?"

"We wish to contract out your services to _keep _him imprisoned, subject to our laws upon the treatment of prisoners of course," Thrakka replied.

"_WHAT?_" Eilistraee cried out, rising to her feet. She sat down again when Lars turned his attention to her once more.

"So in essence you basically want to buy the key to his cell, but keep him in there," Asmodeus summarized.

"Until such time as we can reach an agreement with his pantheon. We feel everyone would get a better deal out of this, especially you and the prisoner," Thrakka said.

Asmodeus considered for a long moment, or at least _appeared _to consider for a long moment as he had already made up his mind upon hearing the initial offer. Finally he said, "I have helped position troops on your walls to prevent further attacks and if it hadn't been for my timely intervention the demons would have completely overrun you and slaughtered you all. Make the deal a little sweeter for me. I want your marshal to accompany me to a meeting with Lord Ao to explain what has been going on."

"Deal," Thrakka and Lars said simultaneously. Thrakka then said, "We will of course put it all down in writing after these initial negotiations and then officially perform the swap."

"Of course," Asmodeus purred.

Thrakka then turned to Eilistraee and said, "The cost for the release of Corellon Larethian is the head of the Shar. The cost of getting in to _deliver _the goods is to agree to obey our laws on religious practices, not that I see your church breaking our laws _anyway…_"

Eilistraee glared hatefully at the hobgoblin while Malar and the orcs smirked at her misfortune.

"You realize of course that every elf will hate you now," she declared.

Thrakka shrugged and said, "Do we look like we care?"

Asmodeus had to admit that as much as he disliked the ideals of these creatures, they could be clever bastards when necessary.

* * *

_Kirilae had slumped down from exhaustion, watching the rain pour down, washing away the blood. The action had ended a short while ago, Lars having swept through the town and brutally restored order, killing anything that resisted without hesitation or mercy._

_And then, limping through the destruction with a rifle as a crutch, Johan emerged. Smiling grimly at her, he said, "Hey."_

_It was impossible to tell if either one of them was crying due to the rain._

_But not really._

* * *

Ao tugged nervously at his collar as the connection was made. The two creatures Asmodeus had brought with him looked so normal, but beneath the surface they were monsters; relatives of the Void Born that had resulted in his exile so many eons ago. But the Almighty would want to meet them.

"Now cheer up Gunnhild, we're going to be talking to your grandpa soon and maybe even some of your aunts so don't worry. And we're going to find momma, even if we have to kill everything in the Far Realm to find her," Lars said with a smile, wiping away the tears of Chaos stuff that leaked from Gunnhild's eyes.

She had been bawling nearly non stop since the moment she lost contact with Skuld when she dived through the portal.

Smiling a little while she still had tears in her eyes, "Promise?"

Smiling sadly, Lars said, "I've already promised myself and her that I'll find her. Now come on, let's go talk to grandpa."

* * *

Sitting on her throne in Hell, Hild noted with a slight touch of fear the distant echoes of a bellowed, "_AO!_"

Smoothing out her dress slightly, she leaned over to one of her minions and said, "Note to self: cancel all missions for the next week, let the Almighty cool off a bit first."

* * *

Months later and the winter had come and gone, as had the gods, heralding many changes. But for two people the only change they cared about was the one they presented before the dawn.

Cradling the newborn in his arms while his wife rested, Johan gently rocked her back and forth and said to her, "Your mother and I both lived deep under the earth for a long time, without a sky, without a heaven to dream of. But because of a lot of brave people _you _get a sky. You get the sun and stars."

The dusky skinned infant managed to crack open a single bleary eye and gaze at the dark sky growing azure as the sun crept over the horizon before she closed it again.

_Of course _she got the stars. She had been promised them already.


	65. Schooled

**Chapter Sixty-four: Schooled**

"And how are you today Scipio?" Doctor Izaak Wronski asked as he entered the lab, the technicians just starting the day's activities.

"I am well doctor. The reconstruction of my processing cores goes smoothly, with my survival core up to 97.1042% capacity and my personality core at 4.5729% capacity. While supplemental additions have given me more 'thinking room' so to speak, the architecture is strange and my calculations are still off as according to my analysis the deoxidation processes that are restoring my systems should be prohibited by the laws of thermodynamics," Scipio replied through his speaker.

Chuckling, Izaak replied, "Rest assured that your calculations are correct Scipio, it is just that you are using the wrong formulas. You are of course aware of the relationship between causality, relativity, and the speed of light?"

"All those topics are essential to the targeting of my hellbores, so while the computational algorithms are currently unavailable, I am aware of the relation between the three subjects," Scipio answered.

Izaak nodded and said, "And you know how touchy those subjects get with regards to faster-than-light travel and communication?"

"I do," Scipio answered.

"Well the nannite swarms currently working on your processors are using a form of FTL communication to extract information in an acausal manner and restore to a state prior to damage," Izaak explained.

Scipio pondered the explanation for 1.213 seconds, a small eternity, before he replied, "I will have to save further questioning for when I have more computational power and access to the relevant equations."

Izaak chuckled and asked, "Thinking of getting out of soldiering and into computer science?"

"I rather doubt I would be able to attend most conferences and consortiums once you complete repairs, and I must say that soldiering is all I truly know," Scipio replied.

Chuckling lightly, Izaak said, "Nonsense, you could easily _be _the conference centre if you wanted."

"Event security would be rather easy to achieve, I would have to admit," Scipio deadpanned.

"There's the spirit. Now, we have something special lined up for you today Scipio. With the majority of your core personality recovered we wish to run a few simulations to test some of our theories… if you agree of course," Izaak asked.

"What sort of simulations?" Scipio inquired with interest.

"Computer modelling of a possible reconstructed body for you in a combat scenario. We expect your effectiveness to be impaired but it will give us some additional data to work with," Izaak explained.

"I would enjoy that doctor, although the data obtained would be of marginal value as just two days ago I was forced to a draw at a game of chess with a most peculiar fellow," Scipio said almost dejectedly.

Izaak snorted and said, "The fact that you ended in a draw is merely the limitations of the game. On that level your processors are working fine."

Scipio was confused for 0.6819 seconds before he sought further information, "Artificial intelligences using my design architecture have not lost or drawn to a human at chess in… I do not have the exact date so I will have to be imprecise and reply 'a thousand years'. That I was unable to achieve victory indicates that the damage is more extensive than I anticipated."

Izaak frowned and asked, "Did anyone tell you exactly what was going on?"

"Negative. While obviously skilled…" Scipio began before he ceased as it appeared Izaak was about to interrupt him.

"If you had been playing go you would have lost to him, even if you were at full capacity. He is a strategic master and only games with an optimal strategy can produce anything other than a loss against him," Izaak explained.

"While human heuristic patterns do prove useful in complex battlefield conditions, the limits of biological processing power put strict upper limits upon the success of such efforts," Scipio replied.

Izaak then said calmly, "And if your opponent was not limited by human biology, or even by physical hardware or causality?"

"Such assumptions are absurd. To reject such limits is to remove all parameters of comparison and invite no limits fallacies," Scipio protested.

"This shall be an interesting trial then. Your fellow test subject is ready to begin whenever you are ready," Izaak replied.

* * *

I enter into the artificial battlespace and begin taking stock of the scenario. In the first 3.915 seconds I compile a list of all incorrect parameters for the specifications of the simulated Mk. XXXIII Bolo and I am pleased as the system corrects, although I am given a warning that further modifications will be impossible once the simulation starts in full.

I accepted these terms as reasonable.

I am then given a tactical briefing on the scenario. It is to take place within and around a destroyed urban centre. The entrance to a subterranean installation is currently being defended by a small battalion of light infantry backed-up by a formidable war machine. Strategic bombing was out as there was sensitive data and materials stored within the bunker that needed retrieval. My objective was thus to neutralize the enemy war machine to allow for a ground assault with infantry after. Knocking out the dug in infantry was also an acceptable secondary objective if the primary could not be completed to potentially allow for infiltration by Special Forces, but indiscriminate mortar fire could seal the entrance to the underground base, thus causing a mission failure.

My fragmented memories from shortly before the incident that crippled me and nearly rendered me brain dead indicated that this mission required considerably more finesse than I was used to. Refreshingly so.

Tactical data on the enemy war machine was slim. Approximately 45 metres tall, depending upon the measurement method, it was based upon a humanoid shape and possessed heavy armour and battle screens of considerable effectiveness. Secondary point defence hellbores were of possible use for attrition of shield or attacks on the bare armour or delicate components, as were the 240cm mortars against bare armour, but it was judged that only the primary hellbores were capable of reliably knocking down the target's battle screens.

Analysis of combat video and suggested mechanics suggested that the enemy machine would be capable of presenting a profile beneath the depression limit of my primary hellbores if sufficiently close. The enemy would have to be held at range. Fortunately analysis suggested reaction times within human norms.

Tactical data on offensive capacities was lacking more than defensive capacities. Primary armament was some form of variable setting fusion plasma weapon constructed around a basic pattern similar to an infantry rifle, only scaled up considerably. While external and grasped with actual physical hands, the weapon was apparently fed off an internal reactor. Settings on it appeared to include a wide aperture mode that caused considerable splash damage but would have difficulty burning through my battle screens, and either pulse or continuous fire mode. The continuous fire mode was flagged as being of particular danger as if also on the focused aperture mode there was a high probability of overwhelming my battle screens as they were configured for high burst energy but were not optimized for continual energy transfer.

The use of contragravity would have to remain limited as operating without battle screens ran the risk of catastrophic damage. This gave the enemy the advantage of speed and mobility, especially in an urban environment.

Overall tactical analysis suggested that engaging at range would be optimal as the city would provide too much cover and increase the risk of the enemy getting sufficiently close to avoid my primary weapons and engage with sustained, focused fire. Indiscriminate Hellbore also ran the risk of damaging the access point.

Despite the fact that it would take a human commander more time to reach similar conclusions, the balance of power was clear. The enemy had the city for cover and a superior capacity to use the cover to advantage and weapons capable of inflicting damage given time and close range, but would likely go down to a single Hellbore shot. They would thus be unlikely to want to _leave _the city and enter open terrain.

Fortunately for the past 10.927 seconds I had been deploying scout drones and scanning the city, seeking my primary and secondary objectives. While the primary objective still eluded me, the secondary was fairly evident, clustered in hardened bunkers and foxholes about the entrance. A layer of armour beneath the surface of the city prevented further scanning, but I quickly identified all positions I could safely bombard.

Cycling in missiles for my VLS cells and loading rounds into my mortar, I prepared an even spread of bunker busting, cluster, and incendiary munitions to rapidly clear the target area of all enemy combatants while still leaving the area sufficiently intact for later capture by infantry. I briefly considered for 52.7694 milliseconds the utility of a partial bombardment to attempt to draw out the primary objective before I decided that guaranteed completion of the secondary objective took precedence over a marginal increase in the possibility of completing the primary objective.

At T + 12.0057 seconds mission time I fired all VLS cells and began a staggered pattern bombardment with my 40cm secondary mortars at a range of 13.8213 km from the centre of the targeted zone.

At T + 19.3901 seconds mission time I was rather shocked to discover that my entire barrage was stopped by a previously unseen planar energy field that extended above the city, all munitions impacting and detonating upon contact with the strange battle screen. The energy plane also had the unfortunate side effect of cutting off contact with fourteen observation drones caught beneath it, and from those above the level of the field, it became evident that they were rapidly painted by active sensors and destroyed.

Ceasing my original bombardment, I switched to a diamond pattern attack with my primary 240cm mortars. Lobbing the huge rounds high into the air via electromagnetic acceleration, I waited patiently for them to complete their 11.3028 second flight time and detonate without effect upon the enemy battle screen.

This would take some thought.

1.1194 seconds later I began my approach on the city. I had a complement of variable yield tactical and strategic nuclear weapons available but they ran the risk of destroying more delicate structures and components that we desired to capture. The city was situated in a valley between some hills and low mountains, creating a natural ring wall to funnel attackers, especially ones massing thirty-two thousand tons.

I had already been forced to cede a considerable fraction of my range advantage; I would not stumble into a shooting gallery due to limitations of the terrain.

Bolos had once been criticized for being unable to do things like climb stairs. The response was that Bolos blew up the staircase, and the building surrounding it, and if you didn't want that much destruction you never should have deployed them in the first place.

Thus I fired a series of specifically placed mortar rounds of both primary and secondary calibre not at the city but at one of the surrounding mountains, using surveillance drones to gather data on the internal stress and fault lines via sonar and ground penetrating radar. Withdrawing my drones, I took up a broadside configuration on the targeted mountain and aligned my primary Hellbores upon the necessary stress points.

T + 7 minutes 47.0912 seconds mission time I fired all three Hellbores point blank simultaneously at the mountain, driving six megatons of burning star into the unsuspecting stone, vaporizing and shattering tens of thousands of tons of rock, triggering a massive landslide that completely flattened the region while leaving the interior of the city intact.

37.5196 seconds later I paved a ten lane divide highway across the still settling rubble. Bolos are never without roads.

Descending down the slope, quickly sprinting over the dangerous portion of the top of the hill where the bottom of my war hull was exposed but my guns could not depress sufficiently to target an enemy. I then settled into a broadside configuration towards the city with my hull down in a drift of debris, only my turrets exposed, and began launching mortar rounds to test the defences now.

As had been anticipated, the defensive field remained, but now it was angled slightly to account for the angle I fired at. Performing a few quick calculations, I aligned a single Hellbore at a large, armoured building, guessing that it was 59.4317% likely to house the origin point of the enemy strategic shield.

The top of the structure flashed to vapour in an instant, the shot angled to cause minimal damage via thermal effects and subsequent atmospheric expansion and shock to the city by only clipping the target. Of course, the mountain behind was not so fortunate, although perhaps more fortunate than the neighbour I had levelled as it only had a significant crater/hole melted/blasted through it.

As reward for my experiment as the building disappeared the enemy war machine was exposed, spherical battle screens glowing as they reflected, absorbed, and conducted away energy. It was already moving, keeping low and with the secondary objective as a backstop, preventing acquisition for a shot that would not endanger the successful completion of the mission.

Finally I decided to improvise. The top agility of the enemy war machine exceeded my capacity to align my Hellbores, but the decision making and reflexive capacity of the enemy was several orders of magnitude lower than my own and if controlled by a human intelligence, which all evidence suggested was the case, then it would be possible to spook, or at least redirect, the enemy with a near miss, thus setting up a later shot for the kill.

I initiated my bow Hellbore, laser initiating the near absolute zero deuterium slush that formed the core, compressing it to the point of fusion while a powerful laser lanced out, evacuating the air around the path of the shot to prevent atmospheric dispersion, although at this range of 3.7881 km it would have been minimal anyway.

With reflexes that forced an immediate and painful re-evaluation of the processing speed and reaction time of the enemy, the humanoid war machine fired its plasma weapon such that the pulse of star hot matter intersected the barrel of my Hellbore right as the laser fired, riding the vacuum ever so slightly such that it impacted right at the end of the barrel.

Under normal conditions the barrel of a Hellbore is _not _capable of withstanding its own firepower, in that active magnetic containment is required to prevent the fusing plasma from destroying the system. The bolt of plasma impacted right on the lip of the barrel, between the expanding containment field and the external battle screen, burning away a large section and quenching about a metre's worth of superconductor.

Hellbore design was a mature technology designed to fail safe whenever possible, but unfortunately once there was a growing thermonuclear explosion in the breach there was little that could be done to stop it. With the containment field at the end of the barrel now asymmetric the plasma would take the path of least resistance, which meant through the barrel in the region of destruction, destroying that section of the barrel and propagating down.

I had sufficient processing power to determine that approximately 29.6107% of the deuterium by mass would remain in the breach when the rupture arrived. Additionally, the crack would was 97.5770% likely to be downward facing on arrival, thus the majority of the energy would be released into my war hull and interior.

I had enough time to send the order to seal all interior hatches not already sealed, but it seemed doubtful that the servos would close the few hatches open for ammunition transfer in time.

Thermonuclear fire flooded through my body, melting and vaporizing endurachrome and flintsteel, destroying systems and igniting munitions. Super cooled deuterium rounds for my Hellbores flashed to vapour and then began to burn with the oxygen in the air, producing a maelstrom in the sections of my bow not already obliterated.

It took 3.7029 seconds for all still functional systems to finish rebooting after _that _blow. The forward primary Hellbore and its turret were now gapping holes in my war hull spewing fire and smoke from burning deuterium and explosives. Practically a giant 'Shoot here!' sign. Seventeen VLS cells were burning, along with three of the formerly armoured magazines. There was a radiological alarm as a nuclear warhead was on fire, spreading radioactive metal and gas throughout my interior. My forward four starboard 30cm Hellbores were destroyed. Two starboard tracks had melted to the ground, which had in turn melted into a substance vaguely resembling certain forms of volcanic glass.

Assessing that I was now 47.0117% combat effective, I began fire suppression, performed an emergency ejection of the two damaged tracks and then began to surge forward, my fusion reactors pumping all available energy into my battle screens and engines.

I was ill suited to this mission, but I could not refuse or complain. I was a planetary siege model, designed to either defend or level entire hemispheres. A precision strike upon a single city was outside my design parameters. Thus I had decided to change tactics such that the mission now fell within my zone of optimal performance.

I could not fight effectively while holding back for fear of hitting the underground bunker and thus failing the mission. I could not engage at long range as only my direct fire Hellbores could pierce the enemy's battle screen. I could not engage in urban warfare as my enemy was smaller, faster, and more agile than I was while retaining sufficient firepower to wound me.

I had to change the parameters of the battle from sensitive urban warfare where all Bolos performed poorly to an open field engagement where Bolos excelled. Thus necessitating the removal of the _urban _aspect.

I ploughed directly through smaller buildings while firing salvo after salvo of mortar rounds with the intent of flattening every part of the city not already destroyed by the uncontrolled Hellbore shot or that led to the bunker. I would smash my way to the objective, park on top of it, and then fire a strategic nuclear warhead to airburst and finish the job, shielding the entrance to the bunker with my body. If the enemy war machine remained after that I could engage at leisure with Hellbores without risking hitting anything sensitive.

Of course, the enemy war machine saw this coming and decided to hunker down by its defensive objective, launching a rapid fire blitz of plasma into my already badly damaged and unscreened glacis plate, chewing through armour and shredded machinery towards the undamaged sections deeper in. Slewing to the side, I began to present my still functional primary and secondary Hellbores, only for the enemy to make an impressive diving leap, firing a continuous beam that began to overload my battle screen in that area.

Tactical analysis was unfavourable. The enemy could remain under my guns, and despite the outlandishly large bipedal design, it could grab on to my devastated front section and 'ride' me while firing its plasma weapon into the hole in my war hull without exposing itself to fire.

Mission success came before unit survival.

My battle screens abruptly dropped as I diverted energy to my contragravity generators and 'popped a wheelie' as the idiom went, throwing my now somewhat less than thirty-two thousand ton mass on top of my sliding enemy at approximately sixty kilometres an hour. The landing shattered several internal systems, broke seven of my remaining eight tracks, cooked off some munitions already rendered sensitive by previous damage, and buckled the armour plate beneath the streets of the city.

Analysis: mission successful and while damage was catastrophic, it was also recoverable…

Improbably I began to rise once more off the ground; only this time I was not the one responsible for the motion as my contragravity generators were offline. The remaining belly mounted camera focused upon the enemy war machine, somehow not crushed after having a Mk. XXXIII Bolo belly flop on it and now quite literally impossibly picking it up. The sheer mechanics of the situation defied all conventional physics.

I lodged a protest at the unrealistic natural of the simulation as the enemy war machine suplexed me, crushing my remaining primary Hellbores beneath my own weight as I landed on my dorsal surface and quite effectively mission killing me.

* * *

"You cheated," Scipio noted calmly as his sensors were returned to normal configuration.

"We deny any such thing," Izaak replied cheerfully.

"The enemy displayed inconsistent reflexes indicating alteration of the scenario parameters after mission start and then there is the issue of the impossibility of the mechanics of a war machine of that size and mass picking up and throwing me," Scipio pointed out.

"Wait until you meet the pilot." Izaak grinned.

Scipio waited patiently for precisely 120.000 seconds before he asked, "Where is the pilot?"

"We were waiting for you to ask. Scipio, meet your sparring partner. Ashley, meet Scipio," Izaak said, indicating the young human woman who had wandered into the repair bay 57.0127 seconds ago.

Scipio analyzed the young woman and reached the conclusion that she was somewhere between 17.2500 and 17.7500 years old, had mixed Eurasian, East Asian and African descent with her last African ancestor occurring a minimum of two generations ago as her hair was strongly red pigmented, although there was the possibility of contribution from a ethnic subgroup such as a Berber or Persian group. General health and development was above average for a human female of her age, but not radically so.

"This is some sort of attempt at humour," Scipio said, with Ashley accompanying him in utter deadpan.

She then said, "Welcome to a world with precognition and telekinesis."


	66. School

**Chapter Sixty-five: School**

Ashley tapped her pen impatiently while she considered her options for the upcoming simulation in the afternoon against her bastard of a rival, Scipio. She had made their first fight look easy, but that was because she had been ordered to ham it up at the debriefing, something she had gone to with gusto to keep from freaking out due to the fact that she nearly had to change her plug suit after the tank had _blown up a fucking mountain!_ The fact that it could do _that _hadnot been part of her mission briefing.

Unfortunately, once Scipio had accepted that the impossible was possible and that the improbable was probable, he had responded with alarming acceptance and then began to kick Ashley's ass in the simulations.

Bored, she stopped tapping her pen and started doodling an impression of one of her earlier encounters with Scipio. She had a little super deformed Bolo wearing a leotard with a cute little angry face atop one of the posts of a wrestling ring, preparing to leap down on top of an equally cute version of her Eva, also in a leotard, with a dazed look while it lay helpless on the mat.

When he had his anti-gravity drives functional the giant bastard was surprisingly agile and adroit for a battleship with treads, and trying to engage Scipio in hand to tread combat resulted in Ashley getting crushed, flipped into the air and picked off by a Hellbore, or ground to a paste by his tracks about half the time.

But getting close to the Bolo was the only way to actually have a hope of beating it as trying to engage at long range was a losing proposition. Scipio would just bracket her with three Hellbores and she couldn't physically dodge fast enough to avoid getting hit by one of them, at which point even if her Void Shields and AT-field kept her from dying she would get blasted again two seconds later while still trying to recover at which point she would be dead.

Of course, any individual trick to get to close range would only work once, aside from sitting on top of something Scipio didn't want turned into an irradiated cloud roughly the shape of a mushroom.

Her latest trick had been to use a planar AT-field to hide beneath a section of ground and then drop Scipio into a dead fall while firing her plasma cannon at his belly. The problem there was finding the sort of terrain that wouldn't look out of place after she burrowed in. Scipio had to have seismic sensors to determine what terrain he was mobile in, so now that he knew the trick he would look for it and AT-fields produced a peculiar reading that he would now know to look for…

Ashley interrupted her train of thought as she flipped her page back to the assignment at hand, away from her doodling as she felt the attention of the teacher coming towards her. She then flipped back to her doodling once it was safe to do so. While active psychic abilities were disallowed and there were sensors to check for that sort of thing, Ashley was one of the most gifted precogs of her generation.

One of the less painful reasons why she was a pilot… pilot _junior cadet _irritatingly enough, despite the fact that the Eva was useless without her.

Just three more months and she would be out of this frustrating nightmare, this endless make-work project. The names of every Eva pilot were engraved alongside those of the gods and many were worshipped as ascended daemons. Fuck, the Evas were often _called _god-machines. But Ashley was under a strict gag order not to leak the nature of her 'extra-curricular' activities. Not until she was eighteen and thus legally an adult.

She wouldn't get the full title of Eva pilot until she finished a post secondary degree and her officer training, but at least she would be able to drop the irritatingly contrite 'junior' part of her title and actually tell people about it.

Although the past few weeks she had been appreciating school just a little bit more because it was a few more hours each day where she wasn't getting her ass kicked by Scipio. She'd dropped to the bottom of the leaderboard from first place amongst all of the cadets, junior _and _senior.

There was something she _didn't _want to gloat about.

Her mind drifted a little as she tried to think of ways to trounce Scipio, only to be broken out of her reverie by her instincts telling her to look up right away. Cheryl Henderson was looking her way with a catty smile on. That usually meant that she had something up her sleeve for tormenting Ashley. Stupid bitch…

Stupid high school politics drawing the bitch's attention too. So her family had money and connections because her mother was a member of the Agricultural Output Committee and her paternal grandfather had been a minor industrialist who survived Third Impact and provided the followers of the gods with guns early on. Big whoop. Ashley would get to have a chat with the gods _in person_ on graduation. But until the blessed day when she could actually show off just how awesome she was, she just had to grit her teeth and bear it.

It had all started over a boy too, although one neither one would willingly touch with a twenty foot pole. Most youths had no strong affiliation for any of the gods, but most kids in high school had a thing for Mislaato, with some of the more aggressive types going for Asukhon or Tzintchi, depending on how their ambition manifested. There were very few teenage worshippers of Reigle as she was seen as more suited to old people.

Alan's family were hardcore Reigle worshippers and thus he had gone so far as to gain a couple of minor gifts. Gifts were pretty rare, and two on a teenager were incredible, unfortunately when they came from Reigle this made Alan the least popular kid in a school full of the cut-throat politics of horny teenagers in a permissive culture.

Unfortunately his gifts while gruesome and slightly obnoxious, were extremely useful in that he didn't get bored and he didn't need to sleep, so he could just plough on in life, steady and unceasing. As the diligent worker he was, he used all that extra time and attention to study endlessly, giving him the best test scores in the class. He was considered a major loser, but when you needed extra tutoring, he was the guy to turn to.

Ashley missed classes fairly frequently, and while she had the cover of psyker training, occasionally legitimate, she was only given so much slack. The consequences of letting her grades slip were dire, and the majority of her pay as a pilot was put into a trust fund, so she couldn't hire a private tutor. So she went to Alan for help.

She didn't really _like _him per say, but he had helped her out enough that when she heard Cheryl bad mouthing Alan's more unpleasant aspects, Ashley had asked blithely, "So do you think Mislaato will reward you with a clit on your tongue for all of your worship?"

Despite the fact that Cheryl was quite proud of her skills and activities, she had not quite liked the insinuation that her ability to suck cock was less attention getting for the gods than Alan's ability to collect acne and psoriasis. Especially since it was _true_.

Thus a covert war of rumour and bitchiness between the two of them began, and it was unfortunately asymmetric warfare. Cheryl's family had power and wealth, which meant that she had attracted a gang of sycophants and gophers seeking for some of the gilding to rub off on them. Ashley had few friends due to her Eva training taking up much the time outside school that could be devoted to socializing.

Cheryl had launched the first barrage by spreading the rumour that Ashley had slept with Alan. The few opportunities for dickings Ashley had been cultivating had vanished in an instant. Worshippers of Reigle _prevented _the spread of disease by acting as massive repositories for the unpleasant side of biology, but that didn't prevent human instincts from kicking in. No guy wanted to stick his dick in poon contaminated by Alan's day old street vendor wiener.

While the temptation to just slug Cheryl had been present, picking a fight would probably get the bitch's family involved, and if it came down to a legal battle, Ashley's employers would be forced to step in and bail her ass out, something that would have rather _dire _consequences for Ashley. So she had decided to turn to the most dangerous faction in the school.

The Tzintchians.

In earlier generations they would have been considered a strange blend of nerds and preps, a bunch of overly ambitious and scheming bastards who loved the latest innovations in technology and sorcery. They were a secretive group that liked to pry, liked to gather knowledge, and who had their own bizarre schemes, traits that made them unpopular. Going to them for help was risky because that was like a fly walking into a tangle of competing spider webs. And while they generally all went on to become successful scientists, engineers, officers, politicians, businessmen or the like, they were still generally considered losers in school for consistently trying to get good grades and other things instead of trying to get as much pussy or dick as possible.

This of course meant that Cheryl avoided them and tried her best to stay out of their machinations. So Ashley had gone to them and through her secret military connections managed to get a few of the de-classified but harder to find files to some of the military nuts, which was upgrade her status from 'pawn' to 'useful pawn'. She wanted something to use against Cheryl and she knew she could bargain it from them.

Through the close knit ties she had moved into the notice of the intelligence nuts, a truly creepy trio who waged a clandestine war with the administration of the school by constantly trying to set up their own monitoring networks. It had turned into a bit of a 'Great Game' as neither side would actually let out their activities even to retaliate for the actions of others because it would be publicly embarrassing for everyone involved to have their actions made public.

The three of them had cameras set up all over the school that they used to gather information for their own purposes… one of which was a minor voyeur porn ring that they ran amongst the students, although they kept the juiciest bits squirreled away, awaiting the perfect opportunity to use. They were particularly fond of petty blackmail.

From there Ashley devised a rather roundabout plan, mostly because it helped secure her position amongst the Tzintchians as they appreciated that sort of thing. Then she secured a deal with a budding future entrepreneur who had a longstanding rivalry with Cheryl over her family connections and some break that Ashley hadn't known about at the time. One rather depraved sex act "caught" by a hidden camera, some military grade time stamp editing, and a "blackmail" attempt that went south later and Ashley had managed to purge herself of the rumour that she had slept with Alan and replaced it with the rumour that she was really, _really _kinky and that Cheryl was just a jealous bitch afraid of someone usurping her position as the best 'net worker' in school.

That had been the peak of Ashley's offensive actions as Cheryl had an unpleasant tendency to escalate rather faster than even most berserkers found prudent. Smarting from the blowback in the rumour mill, Cheryl had somehow convinced one of the teachers to start unfairly grading Ashley. Ashley strongly suspected that the trading of sexual favours was involved, and while encouraged between the students it was _highly _illegal between students and faculty. Whatever Cheryl had done though had been out of the prying eyes of the surveillance cameras.

Of course, while the military wasn't particularly compassionate about social problems or personal struggles with algebra, they took very poorly to attacks of that nature on one of their pilots. So after a few weeks of investigation the teacher suddenly discovered that he was being called up for militia duty for six months due to an error on his training records that indicated that he had not properly completed a training module and thus he would have to retake basic and a portion of his initial stint in the military.

The appeal process took seven months to get to tribunal.

Let it not be said that the military was not without its sense of humour.

Unfortunately this seemed to enrage Cheryl all the more despite the fact that Ashley had only brought up the concern of unfairness in marking to her rather aggressive guardians, and she had to spend the next two months staying low under the blistering assault of petty invectiveness until the year ended.

Two months later and Cheryl had calmed down to the level of 'non-apocalyptic' but she was still incredibly pissed at Ashley and so the past seven months had been spent putting up with Cheryl's petty bullshit, mostly Cheryl wrecking Ashley's chances at getting laid. Ashley occasionally retaliated by releasing the latest bit of dirt her voyeuristic allies had dug up, but she kept it low to avoid escalating the situation to the point where the military had to step in again.

Of course, since the past few weeks when her training had really stepped up with Scipio, she barely had the time to think about anything but how to beat that damn Bolo. Who the fuck put treads on a thermonuclear battleship anyway?

Eventually Ashley just ignored Cheryl and went back to her doodling, not quite sure why her senses pricked up at that time. Maybe the bitch was planning something…

About an hour or so later as she was heading out of the school to get picked up and taken to the military base where her Eva was stored, a peculiar thing happened. In a series of events that could not be coincidence, two of the Chaos rules football jocks were horsing around and shoved a first year with an excessively large slurpee in hand. Iced syrup went flying everywhere, just in time for a third jock that was running to catch the ball the other two had been fighting over to step in it and slip.

Standing at the top of the stairs and forewarned by her precog Ashley adroitly side stepped and watched as the overly muscular idiot who had probably been rejected for Space Marine training five years ago went down the quick and painful way. She really had no pity for him as he tumbled down, saving that for the pair of second years who had no idea what hit them when the human avalanche struck.

As students rushed to the aid of those fallen, Ashley quietly seethed. It would be damn near impossible to prove that this had been an "accident" and not an actual accident, and Cheryl was keeping the worst of her plotting off campus these days, but her superiors would want to know immediately about any sort of possible attempts on life or limb.

Ashley turned away. Her guardians didn't take excuses for being late that didn't involve police reports.

* * *

Ashley slid on her plug suit, a non-descript military issue black one that she tragically could not show off to all the horny boys out there. While, like the naughty nurse or the slutty policewoman the uniform of the Eva pilots had exaggerated fetish forms, the gods kept exclusive right on the military version of the plug suit and thus while far less revealing than the novelty versions, actual plug suits were considered far sexier due to their rarity.

Aided into her entry plug by her team of technicians, who she only absentmindedly nodded to in thanks while she plotted her strategies and tactics against Scipio. For some reason they always gave her the mission briefings for these sorts of simulations after she was in the Eva, probably to better prepare her for rapid deployment later. She had to think fast when thrown into a scenario, had to already be prepared for anything.

As the entry plug filled with LCL and she felt the psychic amps connect to her brain, feeding her sensory data from her Eva, which in this case was faked by an extremely sophisticated array of computers that could simulate a real world combat scenario quite accurately. Right now her Eva was secured in its throne and the sensory data was a real feed, letting her see the three Eva bays where the shattered hulk of Scipio lay.

One thing that Ashley had never begrudged Scipio for was the fact that the bastard was fucking _tough_. When he had first been hauled in it had taken a month to scrub and strip out all of the radioactive parts of the Bolo. The treads had been all missing when they found Scipio and the drive wheels rendered down to mangled stubs by the AI tank's refusal to stop moving. Multiple direct hits on the glacis plate by Hellbores or their equivalents had drilled a ragged, melted hole nearly to the command centre. The rear was almost completely shorn off, only a slight indication of the rear Hellbore, apparently by a shaped charge thermonuclear warhead that made skin contact.

Analysis indicated that Scipio had ceased function due to _running out of fuel _and then he slowly succumbed to brain death as the ionizing radiation that flooded his hull ate away at his electronics until only a nub at the centre of the survival core remained viable.

The other Bolos they had discovered on that radioactive wasteland had apparently been in worse shape and most were unsuitable for even parts salvage, a testament to their ability to keep going. Hell, technically Ashley had only ever mission killed Scipio, and had never actually succeeded in outright destroying the implacable war machine, while he had vaporized her multiple times.

Then the face of the base commander, Brigadier General Stuart Scott, an ironically very Indian man whose family had been tied to Britain since sometime around the late 19th century who still managed to somehow pull off an impressive Scottish accent. If he was giving the briefing that meant that they had something special cooked up.

"Aw reit noo kiddies. We've decided 'at yoo've performed weel enaw in tryin' tae kill each other fur th' time bein', sae the-day wer're daein' somethin' a wee bit different. The-day yoo're gonnae wark together tae try an' hauld back a simulated coonter lat at tae repulse a planetary invasion. Tae simplify things fur the-day th' only objectife oan th' field will be th' enemy forces, but in future missions ye will also hae tae protect friendlies," General Scott explained.

Ashley ground her teeth but said, "Of course sir." Damn it! Scores were only posted on the leaderboard if they involved competition _between _pilots. If they began a cooperative training schedule then Ashley might never recover from the savage thrashing Scipio had given her in the rankings.

"We're uploadin' th' mission profile an' th' simulation noo," General Scott said before the transmission ended and data began to flood Ashley's mind.

She always had to repress the urge to gasp a little in the LCL whenever they fired up the Eva, although in this case they were just feeding the data that she would get if there was an actual activation. The experimental and Series One Evas had apparently been much more feral than the current Series Five Evas, but the fact that they lacked S2 engines and plasma reactors meant that the surge of god-like power must have not quite been the same.

At her heart power was drawn from the void, a slippery, exotic source of limitless energy, enough to power her Eva long past the age of the universe… hell, with the AT-field the Evas could theoretically last past the age of baryonic matter. The S2 engine powered mobility, the AT-field, regeneration, and in more evolved models more esoteric things like flight. It was a cool, obedient, yet devious energy, almost like a trained snake.

Meanwhile at a point between her shoulder blades a star burned, the plasma reactor flooding her nerves with an intense fire that was almost erotic. Whenever the reactor first started up it was like an orgasm in her spine. Hot, arrogant energy, it was kept well confined and thus was more trustworthy than the S2 energy. There was also more of it, if limited in duration due to fuel supplies. The plasma reactor powered the plasma blaster and the void shields, which while nowhere near as versatile as the AT-field, were much better at dealing with huge amounts of energy.

Then the mission profile data hit her mind and she nearly lost control of her excretory system. This wasn't a mission against other possible targets like the Goa'uld, the Ori, the Federation, the Klingons, or even actual competent ground forces like the Imperium, Eldar, the Orks or other such beings. No, this simulation was against the _Necrontyr_.

Everyone knew that they would face the Necrontyr one day, but everyone assumed that it would be a future generation that would bring down the sixty million year old empire. They were bogeymen used to frighten children and the justification for the ever increasing military build-up. As far as she knew, Ashley had never heard of a simulation against them.

A cool male voice entered her head. "Ah, junior cadet pilot Ashley, you are more familiar with the laws of physics in these conditions I am, but can you confirm the numbers?"

It was Scipio. Scipio was asking her if this was bullshit or not. He was probably confirming elsewhere while she waited, but considering that she had been the one screwing with physics when fighting with him before, he wanted to hear it from her mouth.

Adrenaline having flooded her bloodstream, her mouth only kept moist by the LCL that surrounded her, Ashley said, "This information is normally classified, but I have no reason to suspect it is false."

"That would imply that their personal infantry weapons could eventually destroy us without our shields up, given time," Scipio pointed out.

"It would," Ashley whispered in horror.

The basic infantry unit was a tall, thin alien with, dour, sunken features and oddly elongated proportions, especially about the face. They were wrapped in thin, segmented shells of metal that clung to them tightly, not needing the bulk of servo assisted power armour as the metal was both protective and mobile. In their arms they carried long rifles set with eerily glowing green tubes: gauss flayers.

Just the weapons used by the infantry were enough to give Ashley the willies in her Eva as they could theoretically eventually drill through her armour given enough time, and then there were the units equipped with phase shifting armour that could probably just fly through her armour and rip her apart in her plug if her AT-field went down. It was what the infantry was supporting that really scared her though.

Their primary target was not anything as simple as a monolith or an obelisk tank, oh no. No, those would be support units. No, their primary target was a _Khufu_-class mobile oppression barge. Basically a small warship incapable of getting any higher than orbit, it was a two-hundred fifty metre long floating fortress, its main section a broad, flat blade with two smaller triangles jutting out at the sides along the rear quarter. Along the rear section where it broadened out there was a massive gold pyramid set with a dreadful green crystal at its apex on the top side and a somewhat more modest ziggurat on the bottom side. The pyramid contained the command centre and a particle whip while the ziggurat contained a portal capable of bringing in reinforcements from across the galaxy. The top front section was a carrier deck for four monoliths and a dozen obelisk tanks and had turrets for arrays of quadruple heavy gauss cannons. The bottom front section was studded with more cannons and extensive gauss flux arcs.

It was a floating grim reaper, a relic from a war sixty million years ago that had been crewed by unimaginably many generations of Necrontyr and it was their job to kill it.

By the time the tactical data download finished and the simulation began, Ashley had to exert all of her self control keep from trembling in her seat. This was just a simulation, but that didn't mean it wouldn't _feel _real. Worse yet, seeing the numbers and knowing that there were millions of worlds out there dominated by the Necrontyr it suddenly made their position seem all the more precarious. If one of those things landed on Earth it was all over for everyone. Everything would die, their molecules stripped apart layer by layer until there was only dust and sand blowing in the wind of a dead world.

Ashley had forgotten all about her ranking on the leaderboard, she had forgotten about wanting to defeat Scipio, and she had most definitely forgotten about Cheryl.


	67. Lesson

**Chapter Sixty-six: Lesson**

The sun was hot, a white sphere that hung in the sky like a baleful eye, baking the planet below. A class F5 star to Sol's G2, it was about 25% brighter, and the planet was a touch closer than Earth was as well. Only relatively low water content had kept the planet from undergoing a runaway greenhouse effect like on Venus. As it was the planet was hot and dry, covered in dense scrubland and colossal, continent spanning deserts with low, salty seas that were more overgrown lakes than true oceans.

The Necrontyr loved it. It was a world cooler than their own hellish homeworld while still being warm enough to their tastes. The local plant life, scraggly blacks, blues, and browns, also appeared vibrant to their more UV sensitive eyes.

Ashley only absorbed the fact that it was hot outside through the sensations coming from her external sensors and the feeling of her Eva through its black, energy drinking armour. Of course, in her current state of near panic the disjunction between the warmth on her Eva's skin and the coolness of her own flesh as fear gripped at her.

She and Scipio were in a small valley carved by period flash floods and the winds of this world that could accumulate without interruption across vast savannahs and deserts and then hurl sand and grit hard enough to create weird, fluid sculptures on the rocks.

"Don't launch drones or begin active scanning," Ashley warned.

"Reasoning?" Scipio asked.

"The metal that composes their armour and technology absorbs microwave and radio waves extremely well. You'll just give away our position," Ashley explained. "Trust me, the moment they pick up a strong radar signature they'll zero in on our position and its over."

"And you have this information how?" Scipio inquired.

"Precog… damn it, if we try and engage we're just going to get swarmed and then the barge will pound us into scrap," Ashley noted, possible scenarios, still distant and fuzzy but clear enough, running through her mind as she peered across time.

"Then our first objective would be to separate the enemy from their support elements," Scipio calmly noted.

"They have a portal, they can summon reinforcements from any part of the galaxy," Ashley pointed out, living out the awful experience of having wave after wave of monoliths and obelisk tanks rush out of the swirling green portal on the under side of the barge.

"So the enemy has superior firepower, superior numbers, and superior logistics. I had received the data myself but I still find some of the implications hard to reconcile. Your confirmations however are quite useful as you help define what is possible and probable now that the standard laws of physics as I knew them no longer apply," Scipio noted.

"Yeah, well when you can see into the future like I can and all you see is screaming death then the usefulness of my abilities don't seem all that apparent," Ashley replied.

"On the contrary, your contributions have prevented the implementation of several tactics and strategies that would have had no degree of success without your forewarning. While unconventional and imprecise, I have learned in our encounters that your predictive abilities have a frustratingly high accuracy. You have used this to achieve victory far outside the probabilistic bounds of your machine and your own biological limitations," Scipio told her.

Ashley paused for a moment, her fear somewhat forgotten as her brain chugged away at parsing that statement before she asked, "Did you just tell me that you respect my precog because I've been kicking your ass?"

"Idiomatically, yes," Scipio replied. "You are more than the sum or product implied by your parts. While true that I have achieved more victories than you, the fact is that you continue to surprise me with unconventional and unpredictable strategies despite repeated refinement of my own methods. So what do you suggest we do that the enemy would not expect?"

Ashley thought for a long moment, confused by the admission that Scipio seemed to find her as infuriating and frustrating to fight as she found him. Finally she said, "We have to destroy their portal and cut off their ability to call for reinforcements."

Scipio seemed to take a second or two -a time Ashley knew was an eternity for the AI- to formulate a response. Finally Scipio said, "That would involve approaching close to the enemy, which as we have already established has difficulties due to issues with detection and support from secondary units."

"I know, but it's the only way we will have a hope of winning. Even if we start kicking ass and taking names in huge numbers, it will just call in wave after wave of reinforcements while pulling away from us. We need to ambush the barge, hit it hard and fast when it does not know when the attack is coming," Ashley explained.

"We are not exactly optimally designed for ambushing," Scipio pointed out.

Ashley grinned and said, "Maybe you…"

"I have already developed a counter to that tactic and in any case if you have your AT-field active you will be unable to tell when the enemy is at optimal range due to its levitating method of locomotion, and if you do not have your AT-field active you will be quite visible to IR even if buried in the sand," Scipio responded.

"I will have to trust in my precog and reflexes to tell me when to fire then," Ashley responded with all of the courage she could muster up. It was funny talking to Scipio; he seemed to inspire her want to do better since he never criticized her for wanting to do the impossible.

"Can your precognitive abilities tell you where to best set your ambush?" Scipio asked.

"I can only get images that basically sum up to 'probably a good idea' or 'probably a bad idea' for things between forty-five seconds to three hours in the future unless I seek the answer to an exceedingly specific question, so not as such no. But so far this plan only includes my contribution," Ashley replied.

"I am to serve as the bait to your trap then?" Scipio asked coolly.

"Yes. I need you to lure them. It's hard to describe precog, but anything beyond pure reflex is like looking at a tangle of possible outcomes, all with different probabilities associated with coming true. I can however act to make certain outcomes more likely than others. There are no guarantees though until a few seconds before things come to pass. So if you serve as a lure I can increase the probability of the enemy being in a certain location at a certain time," Ashley explained.

"How will I lure them then?" Scipio asked.

Looking over her intelligence map and peering through the future, Ashley replied, "They are current on a mostly direct line as they expand a search pattern for us. The course of the barge will not deviate for the next ten minutes. There is however a section of dunes not far from our current location I could hide in that would serve my purposes, but the barge would not cross over it unless it diverted. I have a set of waypoint and action pairs, call them 'action points' if you will, that should get the barge to divert to your location."

Ashley then took a slightly trembling hand off one of her butterfly grips and began typing in the necessary coordinates. Scipio received them without complaint or comment before he said, "These are surprisingly precise, down to the second."

"Sorry, I know you like things to four decimal places," Ashley replied semi-sarcastically.

"Any interesting concept though: fighting an enemy over the horizon while not using any active targeting systems or spotters and before they have fired a shot that could be used to calculate distance," Scipio commented. "I trust that these varying time marks are to present an unpredictable velocity and thus force the _Khufu_-class barge to divert to bring its sensors to bear."

"Yes," Ashley responded before realizing it wasn't a question. It was a statement of actual trust.

And then Scipio left, his tracks kicking up a huge column of grit as he moved for the first action point.

Leaving Ashley alone. It was just a simulation, but it still scared the fuck out of her. Was there any way to truly train for this sort of thing? For a long moment the urge to just give up because she had no hope of victory nearly overwhelmed her. Everything had always come easy to her because of her precog. Her Eva had few overt mutations, just enhanced speed, stealth, and reflexes so she could eke out the most from her gift. But those didn't seem like nearly enough right now. Scipio found her a tough opponent despite continually kicking her ass and she had no clue how to beat the Necrontyr where she was constantly plotting and losing against him. What chance did they have?

But then the bitch in her rose to the surface. How was she ever going to claw her way back to the top of the leaderboard if she just gave up now? She was better than that! Had Tzintchi ever sat in his Eva before his ascension crying about how he wanted to run away? Never! She was going to meet him one day, and all the other gods, and would she say she was afraid of a _simulation?_ _Never!_

With a surge, Ashley had her Eva take off, running across the barren landscape, forming her AT-field beneath her Eva's feet so that she had superior traction and speed while avoiding ripping up the landscape and leaving a nice trail or series of dust clouds to follow to her hiding place.

Arriving at her chosen hiding place, she then formed her AT-field into a horizontal plane beneath the sand and used it to push up, excavating an Eva sized hole for her to crawl into before carefully dropping the sand back into place, forming an AT-field about herself to prevent sand from falling into the barrel of her plasma blaster and from letting her IR signature leak to where her enemies might detect it.

For several long minutes she had to fight down the dual fears that she had dug her own grave and that she was just running away. She could handle this. Of course, she would need quite the shower after she got out as her plug suit was practically a swimming pool from all of the cold sweat soaking her.

Scipio would begin by bombarding the barge and its infantry support from across the horizon with his mortars, and then begin firing his hellbores along seemingly random vectors but were actually the paths Ashley predicted the scouts would take, hopefully knocking them out of the sky before they could report back.

It had to work. It had to.

It…

A sudden twinge told Ashley that long minutes of waiting, down in the dark had paid off as she pulled the trigger to her plasma blaster on instinct, unleashing a narrow beam of white hot star matter.

The dune she had hidden beneath exploded into a shower of sand and molten glass, revealing the _Khufu_-class barge floating above, its dull grey metal faintly gleaming with the green energies of its weapons and drives. Immediately above Ashley there was a swirling green portal, and her beam slammed directly into one of the edges, cutting into the dread material and melting it away. The swirling green portal immediately cut out and died, but Ashley held down the trigger until her gun went into automatic shut-down so it could cool off.

Something important looking dropped off the lower ziggurat.

Then Ashley was running, her Eva churning out of the sand, kicking shocked and surprised infantry out of her way. She barely made it out from beneath the shadow of the barge before green lightning began to engulf her Eva, ripping apart her shields as she sought to escape.

Acting on instinct, her left hand snapped out so fast she created a sonic boom with its passage and snatched a rather surprised monolith out of the sky. Crushing its armoured surface, she then whipped around and hurled the stunned vehicle back at the barge. The gunners attempted to swat it out of the sky, but unfortunately the regenerating hull was quite good at resisting gauss flayer beams and thus it was quite undiminished when it impacted the barge with a satisfying crunch. The damage was a pin prick, but it bought Ashley enough time to get her Eva behind a nearby set of rocks.

The shelter lasted a few seconds before it was ripped to its constituent atoms by the unholy force of the particle whip that served as the main weapon, but it gave Ashley enough time to regenerate one of her fallen void shields before she dashed out again.

Time slowed as her perceptions accelerated, as she pushed her Eva for every bit of speed it had. Her armour would be of little use if one of the heavy gauss cannon clusters hit her with her shields down, so she just had to move faster than they could track. The anti-infantry weapons limned her Eva in a halo of green lightning, slowly chewing away at her shields, but she kept moving, ducking and dodging and weaving to avoid the grim fate that awaited her if she let the big guns target her for even an instant. In turn, she set her plasma blaster to pulse fire and peppered the barge with ravenous energy, blowing away and melting weapons mounts.

She was already diving and rolling beneath the barge as its particle whip fired again, vaporizing a chunk of the desert. The move kept her alive, but only for a little while longer as her shields failed again while she was under the sights of dozens of weapons emplacements. Her skin began to crawl and burn as the armour and flesh of her Eva was burned away, only to begin regenerating again.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one regenerating, for already parts she had melted away were flowing back into shape, the metal resuming the form it had born before she had rearranged it.

Trailing smoke and fire, an entire section of his war hull stripped away by repeated particle whip attacks from monoliths and obelisk tanks, Scipio emerged over a hill while phase shifting troops contended with the many, _many _anti-personnel weapons that studded the surface of the Bolo. With a massive dual thunderclap Scipio fired two hellbores and completely ripped the portal ziggurat off the bottom of the barge.

Switching her plasma blaster over to loose confinement continuous fire mode, Ashley swept the space around Scipio with a flamethrower like cone of plasma, burning away most of the infantry even as she felt her Eva getting flayed alive. The void shields in her shoulder mounts had already been destroyed, stripped away by the relentless fire.

Scipio returned the favour she had done for him by placing his third Hellbore shot into a cluster of heavy gauss cannons and turning them into molten slag.

Staggering away, her whole body alight with pin pricking pain like everything had been slept on funny and had not received a proper supply of blood in hours, Ashley noticed that the barge was beginning to rise and accelerate away. It would put distance between them and then smash them flat with its particle whip.

Dropping her AT-field, the only thing that had been keeping her marginally intact under the relentless assault, Ashley instead manifested it as a sloped plane in front of Scipio and cried out over the radio, "_Charge!"_

Scipio hit the ramp at full speed and rapidly gained traction on the phase shifted surface, accelerating up to one hundred ten kilometres per hour. He rode the full way up the ramp before the pain caused Ashley to lose control and the field disappeared. It was good enough though as Scipio was already on a parabolic arc that would take him on to the flight deck.

With a massive thump and crash of shattering metal, Scipio scraped across the surface of the barge, all three Hellbores trained on the pyramid that contained the particle whip. He discharged all of them simultaneously at the exact same at the same spot. The pyramid was ripped to shreds in a tsunami of liquefied metal while Scipio's momentum carried him across the flight deck and off the other side.

Ashley did not see the end of Scipio as phasing shifting infantry took the opportunity of her lowered AT-field to attack, crawling inside her Eva, slicing it up from within. Ashley screamed in agony as the sensation of being vivisected reached her through her interface with the cybernetic war machine.

The entry plug went dark as the simulation ended with her death. A red message then popped up that read, "_Mission failed. Primary target insufficiently damaged to cease activities._"


	68. Self Study

**Chapter Sixty-seven: Self Study**

Former Captain of the Colonial Military -now demobilized- Kara Thrace sat quietly on top of the corroded, corrugated metal roof of a shack that had seen much better days over fifty years ago before this section of the world was remodelled by forces she didn't want to think too much about because then she might feel sorry for someone else than her.

She took a long draw on the cigarette, almost savouring her disgust for how much it _didn't _taste like fumarella, before she blew it out contemptuously towards the sun setting over the ocean in the distance, the orange light reflecting off the sands of this place.

Gods was this place beautiful, and gods did she _hate _it.

It wasn't home. Oh sure, they had the majority of a continent to fill with a few tens of thousands of people and they didn't really have to talk to their neighbours for a couple of generations if they didn't want to, but all they had to do was look up. Not only were the stars wrong, but amidst the alien constellations you could see the reflections of their ships and shipyards.

The _Galactica _was up there somewhere, being pawed over by some abomination.

Taking another draw on her cigarette, Kara reflected on the other, more obnoxious reminders that they were tenants on this world, although a small traitorous part of her pointed out that they would have been like that no matter what they found on Earth. There was the biweekly drop off of supplies, but those guys tended not to look like frakking toasters and usually just made sure their cargo was unloaded and got the list for their next deliver before they took off again. They arrived by boat, so it wasn't so bad.

It was the fliers that got to her.

Out in the bay where they had been settled there were a few islands that often got aerial transit in an out. The owners had stopped by to be polite once, but they hadn't been well liked by the Colonials. They were old men who seemed to run small resorts where rich young women came to sunbathe naked on the beaches and then have sex with the owners in an attempt to have their children. Apparently it had to with them being important to the heathen gods of this world, something about killing a monster or something and then later saving a deity… Kara didn't give a frak; she just thought it was creepy.

Those were the most common irritants, but occasionally a military transport would fly in low over the sea, kicking up sonic booms ten metres off the deck. They were big, ugly birds and were apparently combat transports, usually headed for the interior of this damned continent to do exercises. Normally they diverted around the settlement, such that only the scream of their engines and the crack of the air notified anyone to their presence and passing.

But one time… one time one of them had suffered some of accident though and diverted to their location to pick up water and supplies to treat casualties until a medivac unit arrived.

The bird had landed trailing smoke from one of its engines and a hole blown in its side. Then the doors had rolled open to reveal a bunch of _big _frakkers the looked like gigantic frakking toasters, right up until they started pulling out the guys suffering from wounds. They were giants wrapped in equally huge armour. It seemed like everything on this world was made big and horrific.

Kara hated them, hated this world, hated the fact that they had saved them and given them everything they wanted: a safe haven far from the wars and conflicts.

And as she sat there slowly hating everything on this planet, she refused to listen to that little niggling voice that told her the reason she hated it was because she was no longer in control. Even in the worst of times, when the shit was flying the worst, she could always take the controls of a ship and be the master of her own destiny, at least in her mind, for a few hours, or a few seconds when she was in the thick of combat.

And she would never admit to herself that maybe… just maybe the freak show monsters that ran this asylum of a planet might just be able to offer her a job flying some of their machines if she swallowed her pride and asked nicely.

But since she was incapable of doing that, of even thinking that some of her fellow Colonials might feel the same way and wish to explore the larger world beyond this coastal desert, she just stewed in her bitterness and hate before she flicked her cigarette to the side, into the sandy dunes before she decided she had better get back to 'civilization' before the giant frakking spiders started coming out for the evening.

* * *

Ashley sat atop Uluru, gazing up at the stars. After that last battle she had been permitted to take a week off to decompress. The simulation had been significantly worse than initial projections had anticipated and an official apology had been issued, stating that as a junior pilot cadet she should not have been subjected to that sort of scenario.

The only consolation to know that the stars above her held such horrors was that during the debriefing she had discovered _why _she had been chosen. Some of the full fledged Eva pilots could have taken Scipio in a fight, but that would have been with rather unsubtle means like using long range telekinesis to implode the Bolo's electronics, which while an effective tactic, wouldn't really give much training to Scipio. So they had selected the Eva and pilot most likely to just _survive _the fight with the Bolo, which was Ashley, not because she was the leader amongst the cadets, but because she was the only pilot who used high speed and precog to fight to an extent that would allow her a reasonable chance of dodging Hellbore shots.

Then Scipio had requested she be his training partner, at first perhaps to re-evaluate his tactics, but it seemed to have evolved into some sort of AI analogue to pride that he would eventually overcome her ability to confound him. It was kind of touching.

Unfortunately it had led to Ashley being inserted into a simulation that had originally been intended for Scipio alone because he had requested her as his training partner and the military was curious to see how an Eva and Bolo could work together. The end result was that the mobile oppression barge got thrown in at the last second to move the difficulty up.

Too far up.

Unfortunately, while Ashley had been exposed to neural trauma in excess of what she should have been at her age, her superiors had also been stunned by the simulation data they got. They wanted to run more tests, wanted to try new scenarios and variations. The trouble was that Necrontyr logistics were off the charts. Even if they had numerical parity, which they wouldn't, if you fought one Necrontyr world you fought _all _of them so long as their portals were up.

Thus the first strike always had to be against their portal facilities… which tended to be studded with guns. Thus tactics needed to revolve around rapid entrance, massive firepower, and if not a suicide mission, rapid retreat.

There had been some musing about Ashley's Eva riding atop Scipio using her void shields and AT-field to cover him while he diverted all power to his contra-gravity engines, but it had ultimately been decided that as a long term strategy it wasn't an efficient use of resources.

Or, as one of the annoyed researchers had pointed out, "We will not _gattai _the Bolo and the Eva, as such thoughts invariably lead to transformation sequences."

At which point Scipio chimed in, "You know, Dr. Wronski has been giving me access to entertainment media from your culture and I must admit an affinity for the character called Optimus Prime…"

There had been a long pause before General Scott said, "Send a memo tae th' scoots, see if they can fin' a universe wi' Transformers."

Ashley had been too busy laughing after that point to consider that if Scipio was used as the template for a new program of Bolo construction he might very well be considered 'Bolo Prime'.

But while they considered new ideas, Ashley had been given time off… sort of. Officially she was on an 'low intensity rehabilitation exercise' but really she had just been given her Eva to faff about the Australian outback for a week to get her nerves back in line after the simulated phase shifted vivisection of her innards. She was well supervised, just from a distance.

So now she looked up at the stars, trying not to fear them, while laying out on her Eva, which she had lying on its stomach atop Uluru, also known as Ayer's Rock, trying to think of something new.

Because they were going to try out the simulations for the new Bolo load-out soon. While they didn't have the engineering anywhere close enough to completion, they could simulate an early model of their plans fairly soon. They were replacing the front and rear primary Hellbores with plasma blasters, an act that would give Scipio significantly more flexibility with his weapons, while the escort grade _lance battery_ they were going to replace the central Hellbore with and power via a S3 engine would give him enough firepower to knock small warships out of orbit.

If Ashley wanted to stay competitive with _that _she would need to evolve. Each Eva and each pilot were grown slowly over time together, becoming fearsome weapons of war with a wide variety of tricks like psychic lightning throwing, acid blood, or the like. Ashley was considered a bit vanilla for the fact that she and her machine just moved quickly and were good at precognition, with some additional stealth aspects. Admittedly they were exceedingly skilled at those two areas, but still…

Getting up, Ashley descended from her Eva's armoured surface down to the stone of the natural monument, older than even the Necrontyr and their empire. She paced back in forth in the darkness, never tripping not because she had sufficient lighting or good night vision; she just instinctively knew where to put her feet that wouldn't result in her tripping.

She then paused at that. One of the issues with precognition was that one had to be fast enough to use it. Well… sort of. Technically you just had to get into the proper position at the proper time to perform the proper action; with sufficient precog you could take your time on certain things.

But speed, or more accurately velocity, was just change in position over change in time. The trouble was that in order to change position quickly it required changing velocity with time, as in acceleration, which required force. It was the application of force that was the problem, the limiting factor on movement.

But… but…

Thank you physics class!

The Reavers of Asukhon used miniature teleporters derived from the systems used by the Eldar for their Warp Spiders. Star ships used Warp drives to move between the vast distances of space without actually going through all of the intermediate area and mucking about with relativity and the difficulties imposed by the speed of light.

There was a serious scaling issue involved in that an Eva was too big to mount teleporters but not big enough to mount a Warp drive. There were however weird ways of getting around those limitations, like creating a Sea of Dirac or other, stranger methods.

Scrambling back up her Eva, Ashley pulled herself into her entry plug and then began the start up sequence. Simulations could help evolve an Eva, but actual physical practice took actual activity. Firing up the systems, she shivered with anticipation as her S2 engine came online. Her plasma reactor had been left empty and her plasma blaster taken from her so that she was _just _running around in a 40 metre tall alien cyborg of doom instead of one armed with a city levelling cannon and nuke eating shields.

Hopping down off the rock, Ashley began expressing her wishes and desires to her Eva. The psychic phenomenon of the AT-field involved a great deal of 'tricking' the laws of physics and phase shifting. Lances of Longinus and the derivative technologies used by both humans and the C'tan worked by retuning their phase so as to punch through damn near anything… sort of. Ashley knew from hard to understand lectures that the word 'phase' was something of a misnomer, but it was the closest descriptor to what was _actually _happening.

So would it be possible to move her Eva slightly out of alignment with reality? Or at least move the mass out of alignment, perform a teleportation under the lowered values, and then move back into alignment? She would never know unless she tried it out.

* * *

Kara's mouth was hanging open in surprise and horror at the _giant frakking toaster _that had just walked up to the city and hers was not the only one staring at the gigantic black armoured robot that towered over the prefabricated buildings.

There was a slight cough and then a loudspeaker said in a voice that sounded incongruously like a teenage girl, "Is this thing on? Is the translator working properly? Huh… looks like it. Ahem… so I'd heard that you guys built point to point FTL drives. Do you think you could help me with a bit of a technical problem I'm having?"


	69. Parallel Plans

**Chapter Sixty-eight: Parallel Plans**

The gods were often overly stereotyped by those that did not understand them, those who did not realize the full subtleties of their personalities. Tzintchi could be surprisingly blunt, Mislaato strangely subdued, Reigle incredibly chipper, and Asukhon shockingly indirect. Oh sure, they were _mostly _as people saw them, but there were other aspects. Like Asukhon's current plan.

Starbuck would make a wonderful disciple once she was introduced to the wonders of Chaos, and Ashley would be her vector. So much lovely anger all wound up inside that woman, and combined with so much skill. She would have her. It was inevitable.

Especially once she saw what they were cooking up for their aerospace fighters. Such lovely little things. Multi-role fighter-bombers based off a great deal of Eldar technology, the SF/B-120 "Jackknife" was a strong jack-of-all-trades weapons platform that would be able to cover for their currently abysmal logistics by being able to perform a wide variety of roles.

Of course, in the right hands it was found to be a formidable machine, especially if the pilot was trained to not think of it as something that obeyed the laws of aerodynamics or gravity in a vacuum far from any large masses.

Oh yes, Asukhon would have Starbuck, she would indeed.

Especially now that she had escalated the situation a touch.

Tzintchi of course took that moment to psychically storm in on her and cry out, "What did you _do?_"

* * *

Inquisitor Bella rolled her eyes in consternation as the relative peace of her studies were interrupted by the arrival of one of her colleagues. For thirty years subjective she had been hunting for clues as to what had happened, working in close proximity to the normally suspicious and private Blood Angels. They did not particularly trust her as an Inquisitor, but they believed that she had been blessed with a vision of their Primarch, so they were willing to get a little closer to her.

She had quickly learned not to pry too hard into their secrets, lest she trigger an 'unfortunate' response. Space Marines were prickly and prideful, especially a distinguished and ancient chapter like the Blood Angels.

Fortunately, once she learned not to stick her nose anywhere near where the Blood Angels didn't want her looking, she managed to use her status as an Inquisitor and the sway of the Astartes to start up a network for tracking down the _truly _strange things that happened in the galaxy, trying to piece together the nature of what had happened. So far, things had not been going well.

Especially since that had brought Bella into contact with Inquisitor Mosegi.

A more _exasperating _man did not exist. While possessed of piety and loyalty that had seen him through _three _trials so far, two of them ending with execution for heresy of the Inquisitors who had charged him in the first place, Mosegi was infuriatingly unorthodox. Everywhere he went, he brought destruction and mayhem; just that such storms of turmoil tended to cause orders of magnitude more damage to the enemies of man than to the Imperium.

The arguments about what faction within the Inquisition he fit into were enough to drive one mad without having to actually meet the blasted man in person. The Purist factions all insisted he was a Radical, while the Radicals bickered over just what _kind _of Radical. And then he would wipe out a group of corrupt Radicals who looked like they would have common goals with him, only to turn about and expose a Puritan cell for heresy and treason, causing a new round of squabbling over what his goals and affiliations were. Of course, after meeting him just once, the bickering of others about his affiliations was like a breath of fresh air after a year trapped on an ork infested space hulk though.

For one, the man was _far _too glib for an Inquisitor, often making light of the fact that he had more bionics than many senior members of the Adeptus Mechanicus due to his proclivity to get involved right in the middle of the battles and get injured doing things that had caused him to be proclaimed a saint on one world. It hadn't stuck due to the fact that he burned the men who had done it at the stake for unrelated heresies, but still…

Rumours abounded and had no doubt been fiercely blown out of proportion, but apparently a Tyranid hive fleet had once taken a hard right turn after discovering he was in their path. He always downplayed the achievements, although he had once claimed that he had managed to terrify the genestealers on a space hulk by stalking, hunting, and killing them one by one. He was _probably _exaggerating, but he also claimed that Necron gauss flayers 'stung a bit'.

Then there were his compatriots. He had ties to the Raven Guard, the White Scars, Iron Hands, and the Salamanders, to which he probably had about a dozen or so bullshit stories attached. Somehow he also had a frakking convent of Adepta Sororitas attached to him, their sanctuary part of the warship he used as his personal transport. There were only about fifty sisters-in-arms, but _come on!_ Despite these associations, he also towed around with him regiments composed of criminals, mutants, and abhumans. There were even rumours that he engaged in special selective breeding programs to stabilize the genomes of certain mutant lines to bring them up to the level of abhumans.

This brought up the final point that Bella found most infuriating about the bastard. She was _sure _that at least 1% of his associates were descended from him in some fashion, but prying into the sex life of a fellow Inquisitor without good cause was a sure-fire way to get shot by said Inquisitor while everyone else turned a blind eye, but…

Rumours of a member of His Imperial Majesty's Inquisition getting a hundred Adepta Sororitas pregnant _should not stand!_

Then the doors to Bella's office open and she felt a sudden migraine approach.

"Ah, Inquisitor Bella de Lancourt, how lovely to see you. How long has it been for you since we last meet? The tides of the Warp have not been so kind to me if I should make a guess," Mosegi replied with a grin and a swagger to his step as he entered, an elderly yet still quite dangerous associate flanking him and looking a touch nervous at having surrendered her firearms to Bella's guards.

Rubbing her temple, Bella said, "It has been twelve years since I last saw you _Inquisitor_." She hoped that perhaps the extra emphasis on the world Inquisitor would attract the attention of the Emperor and remind him what a fool Mosegi was and perhaps impart some sense and dignity on the shameless man. Greater miracles had happened before.

Like the Ascension.

Raising an eyebrow, Mosegi said, "Has it been that long for you? Ah, perhaps I am merely feeling the age in my joints more now that I possess fewer of the originals… or their first or second replacements. But risking life and limb is merely something we must do in service of the Emperor, and I gladly give my flesh unto Him."

His aide rolled her eyes, and while Bella despised the elevated scum woman for her association with Mosegi, she pitied her more greatly for her association with Mosegi. The woman had apparently been trailing behind Mosegi for the greater part of two centuries, sure proof that the Emperor worked in strange and often cruel ways, and that the human spirit could endure anything.

A sudden impulse of morbid curiosity caused Bella to ask before she thought better of it, "What did you lose _this time?_"

"I honestly lose track myself. Riva, what was I in intensive care for most recently?" Mosegi asked his aide.

"Skin grafts and the replacement of your eyes with your forth set of bionics due to being hit with an orbital lance strike," Riva filled in with a bored tone.

Bella felt a stab of pain through her head and she suddenly had the desire to charge the Eye of Terror. "_An orbital lance strike? Seriously now!_"

Snapping his metal fingers, Mosegi said, "Right! Now I remember why I didn't remember. Yes, I was forced to call down an orbital bombardment on my own position due to being swarmed by foul denizens of Chaos. I obviously wasn't hit by the beam directly, but the atmospheric effects had a rather adverse affect on my health. Fortunately the Emperor protects and I survived while the enemies of man did not."

Rubbing her temples to try and banish the headache settling in on her skull, Bella asked, "Why are you here again?"

"Ah yes, to the matter at hand. You see, a few months back, for me in any case, I stumbled across something most unusual while liberating the deep space naval dock _Port Tempestus_. It and the ships and berth had been seized in a heretical uprising and handed over to the Ruinous Powers, but I lead a rapid response team in there before they could consolidate their hold on nearly half a sector's fleet elements. My work was somewhat aided by the fact that the filthy xenos Eldar launched a simultaneous attack on the facility and got more tangled up with the forces of Chaos than with my own troops, although I vaguely suspect that they may have been trying to kill me in particular, as ever since that _incident _with that Eldrad creature those aliens really seem to hate me," Mosegi mused for a moment.

Cutting him off before he could elaborate on one of his long and exaggerated tales of how he had pissed off an enemy of the Imperium or lost a piece of his body in an improbably huge explosion, Bella asked irately, "And what exactly made you come to me?"

Suddenly turning deadly serious, Mosegi pulled out a data slate and passed it to Bella, saying, "This."

Looking over the slate, Bella frowned almost immediately. There was a pict on the front that showed something that should not have been. There was a man who was quite clearly both a servant of the Blood God _and _a sorcerer, a contradiction that not even the wide variety of Chaos allowed.

"We called him a 'Blood Magus', it was the only thing that fit. His powers seemed to revolve around making his foes' blood boil or transform into cutting whips or blades. There were stranger things though. For one, that sorcerer was attached to a _separate _force of Chaos. Not so strange for Chaos and their internecine fighting, but we don't know where they came from. We suspect some form of teleport assault, but we're not quite sure _how_. But it was their behaviour and technology that really caught us off guard. Bella, these monsters were _good_ at what they did, atypically so. I saw berserkers take cover and use suppressive and covering fire. Not that they _needed _it much, but they demonstrated considerable discipline and other traits. Turn on the video part of the file and you'll see why I came to you," Mosegi explained.

Bella thumbed on the file, and her eyes soon grew wide with fear. It was a recording from a helmet camera and it showed a squad of Chaos soldiers, clearly aligned with the Blood God, attacking a well defended position with skill and discipline, leapfrogging between cover and making good use of grenades to keep the heads of their enemies down. They were taking ground until an enemy berserker Space Marine showed up. They showed no fear and began to fall back with equal discipline, but they were quickly on a rapid retreat as they were cut apart. Through all of this the man with the camera had been carefully taking pot shots at the more typical Chaos forces, not wanting to draw the attention of the mobile and more dangerous attackers.

Then in a crack of displaced air a new berserker showed up. A displacer field was a bit unusual a piece of technology for such a worshipper of Chaos to have, but not inconceivable. What _was _inconceivable was a Chaos Space Marine blocking a blow intended for a lowly mortal and then half dragging, half tossing a wounded ally out of danger before focusing upon the enemy.

"Chaos Space Marines _don't do that_," Bella whispered in disbelief.

"By the Emperor, the majority of _loyal _Astartes don't do that," Mosegi pointed out.

Then the fight turned insane as the new marine began to rapidly teleport and weightlessly flip about the more typical example, hacking his foe apart with precise but brutal strikes at weak points before delivering a decapitating strike. Claiming the head as a trophy, as was wont amongst worshippers of the Blood God, he then rallied his allies and assaulted the position.

The recording ended and Bella looked up at Mosegi.

"I mostly deal with heretics-" Mosegi began.

"And orks," his aide butted in.

"-and orks," Mosegi conceded before continuing, "But I had my xenotech seers look over it and they agreed that the warrior you saw was demonstrating abilities comparable to the Eldar Warp Spiders and Harlequins. That was _not _captured Eldar gear he was wearing, so that would mean it is either made by the Eldar for a Chaos warrior, or…"

"Dark Age tech," Bella said with a shudder. It was a long running nightmare that Chaos might one day get their hands on the technology that had once allowed man to carve an empire in the stars before the Age of Strife, forcing back the orks and Eldar and other threats before succumbing to the mutant, witch, and daemon.

Mosegi nodded and said, "While filthy xenos witches, Eldar hatred for all things Chaos is perhaps their one redeeming quality, which is why I prefer to kill them _last _if the option is available to me. The ones attacking the station seemed to think so as well, for they too attacked these new comers… and the newcomers _only _defended themselves, seeming to loath killing the Eldar."

Mosegi then moved in close, his bionic eyes normally indistinguishable from regular human eyes from a distance now burning brightly in the repeatedly ruined sockets that housed them. "The attackers took one thing and one thing only. They stole a cruiser, a _Chaos _cruiser that had arrived to secure the base and the left none of their dead or wounded behind. They were beasts as befitting the fools that serve Chaos, but they were of the character of a more subtly blasphemous entity. The plots of Chaos are often obtuse and insane, but they follow certain patterns. This was and was not the work of Chaos.

"As what happened to you was and was not the work of Chaos. Why would they only snatch up the souls of Imperial servants and xenos, and only send one agent of their own? I could see a great sacrifice needed to resurrect Horus, but to send the agents of his demise along with him? I have fought heresy and damnation all my life, and neither your story nor mine has the flavour it should. Something is _wrong _here," Mosegi hissed.

"This… this is very valuable," Bella said. "But it brings me little closer to unravelling the true nature of the plots we have discovered."

Mosegi pursed what was left of his lips for a moment before he said, "I am not a great believer in Divine Providence. I believe the Emperor has greater concerns than to intervene in the life of one man…"

Riva noticeably glanced up and down Mosegi's ravaged frame and lightly rolled her eyes. While a touch blasphemous, Bella had to agree with the assessment. Mosegi _had _to lead a blessed life, and so far it didn't seem likely he had made any pacts with the Dark Gods. _Maybe _one of the ork deities had become confused in a rather orky manner and was looking out for the psychotic bastard, but that seemed unlikely.

"…but neither do I believe in coincidence. Bouncing around back and forth in the Warp, one of our Astropaths picked up a weak message not intended for our ears. The Space Wolves know something. Something between their Primarch and the Primarch of the Blood Angels. They apparently went out of their way to capture a member of the Eldar alive for unknown purposes relating to a 'Thirteenth Company'. Chaos, dead and Lost Primarchs, the Eldar… there is a conspiracy here, one with many players unaware of each other, and as an Inquisitor, I intend to unravel it," Mosegi replied coldly.

Bella nodded and said, "That's the first sane plan I've heard from you in quite a while."

Mosegi affected an almost juvenile grin and tilt of his head before he replied, "I try."


	70. Innocence Proves Nothing

**Chapter Sixty-nine: Innocence Proves Nothing**

Well, the Judge was current scattered about in pieces and on fire, so that plan hadn't exactly worked out very well and Spike was trying his damnedest to get out of the line of fire as the warehouse he had turned into his little lair was raked with gunfire. Now, normally vampires scoffed at gunfire, but that was when they were getting shot at with handguns firing 9mms or .45s, not an M2 machine gun firing .50 BMG rounds capable of decapitation or removing a vampire's heart.

Of course there was also the mix of tracer rounds that caused any vampire hit by one to go up like a torch, one of the reasons why the Judge was currently burning. Bastard couldn't be taken down by any _forged _weapon, but unfortunately people hadn't been forging weapons for the past couple of centuries! The berk went down like a chump in the opening salvo when that dork who palled around with the Slayer had shown up with that gun and somehow managed to fire it from the hip while standing without getting knocked on his arse.

Well Spike had enough of this town if this was the way things escalated these days. He and Drusilla were getting out-

The impact that severed his spine did not actually hurt all that much as the nerves were completely severed by the bullet as it passed through him, shattering bone and blowing out a good chunk of his intestinal track as the large bullet expanded as it travelled through him.

Now face down on the concrete with his whole world falling apart around him, Spike muttered "Oh bugger."

He then began to crawl.

* * *

Drusilla was screaming, screaming in her deranged way that, "This isn't the way it's supposed to go kitten!"

Cackling with the psychotic rush, Xander shouted out over the roar of the gun, "Cry some more bitch!" before he perforated the insane vampire, dusting her as one of the huge bullets took her head off above her jaw.

They, well Super Ninja Witch Willow, had infiltrated the Sunnydale Armoury and made off with an excellent collection of heavy weaponry. Now, attacking the vampire stronghold in the middle of the day, they had smashed in a window to let in plenty of light and then had begun the extermination.

The memories of the Imperium would not allow them to continue the way they were. When the forces of darkness there struck, and they struck on levels incomprehensible to the sensibilities of the Scoobies before Halloween, the Imperium did not go "Oh, score one for the bad guys" and let it be. No, they struck back. They got bigger guns, they raised armies, and they paid back butchery and brutality in kind.

When Angel's transformation into Angelus had become apparent, Buffy had not wallowed in self pity or waffled on what needed to be done. No, she had finally given in to the part of her left behind by the Inquisitor, the part of her that said that it was not enough to fight the forces of darkness when she encountered them. No, she had to hunt them back to their holes and destroy them utterly in the process, root out the rot so that it could never again take hold.

When anything that wasn't being shot up stopped moving, Xander begrudgingly released the trigger to the gun. Growling, he tried to get the images of the final fight with Horus out of his head, to resist the urge to jam his bolt pistol into a crack in the armour and pump round after round into the traitor.

Buffy smirked as silence settled and said, "Thus begins operation Dies Incendia."

* * *

The Mayor sat in his chair and glowered down at his town, watching the smoke rise from the cemeteries, watching the Worst Case Scenario unfold. Amongst the intelligent members of the supernatural, there was an unspoken fear over the past hundred of what would happen if they humans ever finally got pissed off. They prey had fangs now, and anything that couldn't shrug off nuclear weapons was vulnerable, and if it came down to it, the demons would horrifically lose a war of attrition unless they had extra dimensional reinforcements.

In short, unless one wanted to trigger an apocalypse, then a war with humanity would inevitably be lost. So far the humans who knew about the supernatural had kept their mouths shut partial because they felt they wouldn't be believed, partially because they were afraid of pushing groups towards seeking the apocalypse option.

Unfortunately when it seemed that every other week some idiot was trying to cause an apocalypse _anyway _it made keeping trigger happy demon hunters in line. Everything had gone wrong since Halloween. Mayor Wilkins had back up plans to all of things that had been wrecked so far, but part of his deal had been to make Sunnydale a haven for demons and vampires. With every crypt and hiding hole in town having just received an arson make-over meeting his obligations was going to be a touch difficult now.

Catching those who had done it was going to be problematic as well. He suspected the Slayer and her friends, but they had been very careful to keep their activities off the streets. If he called in "official" outside help then he risked bringing in competent people who could potentially bust open this whole secret conflict and bring light of the things that go bump in the dark to those armed with tanks and napalm. And so far "unofficial" channels had been proving remarkably incapable of dealing with the Slayer, even before she had decided that she liked gasoline and bullets.

Of course, intentionally staffing the local police with the biggest idiots and sycophantic patsies he could find meant that he couldn't rely on _them_. Oh well, he'd picked them, so he'd surrendered his right to complain about being surrounded by morons.

Oh, this was going to be troublesome indeed.

* * *

Giles arrived at the library to discover his students sitting with a map of Sunnydale in front of them, every cemetery and a few other places all circled in red, and several of them crossed out with red Xs. They did not have the soot smudges or the scent of smoke on their clothing, but the implications were quite clear.

Giles was silent for a moment before he stated, "You are responsible for the current panic in the streets from the string of arson?"

No one said a word, but it was confirmation enough.

Giles exploded. "Damn it! You can't _do _this! Did you even think of the consequences?"

His uncharacteristic swearing caught the group off guard for a moment before Buffy coldly glared at Giles and replied, "Yes. Yes we did. We also considered the consequences of stealing from the US Army and the use of guns. We're tired of playing defence, of letting the bad guys slink back to their lairs so they can lick their wounds, recover, and then kill more people."

"And getting yourselves _arrested _is going to solve all of that?" Giles demanded furiously.

Slamming her hand down on the table with her full Slayer strength, causing the wood to splinter, Buffy retaliated, "Giles! You always wanted me to do more research, but did you think I wouldn't notice all the stuff on the _life expectancy _of Slayers? I just turned seventeen Giles, and according to the records, I'm already living on borrow time! The Watchers treat the Slayers like weapons, so I'm going to give them a _fucking weapon! _I'm _angry _Giles, angry at this world that takes our hopes and dreams and smashes them on the _fucking _ground and grinds our hearts into the dirt."

Xander then very quietly turned to Giles, his eyes sunken in to his skull and his face pale from the strain of the powers within his body. The two of them shared a look before Giles looked away in shame.

"Giles, _I'm going to die_. My body is burning up with what's been put in it, and my mind is slowly breaking up under the strain. All I have is knowledge of war and fighting and the strength to back it up. All I can do is to die swinging, trying to keep this sort of thing from happening to others," Xander said pleadingly.

Giles sunk down into a chair, despairing at what this world had done to these children, suddenly feeling so very old. But then again, they were all older still, weren't they? They had decades, even centuries of memories crammed into their heads, lifetimes of war and brutality. They truly did_ look _tired; tired of the fight and struggle, tired of letting evil happen and not having a good response.

Sighing, Giles said, "Okay, I can accept that we might need a change in tactics, but we need to go about this properly…"

* * *

Spitting up muck better left unconsidered, Spike managed to haul himself out of the reservoir around the Sunnydale waste treatment plant. He was still paralyzed below the waist and in terrible condition, but his head and heart were still intact, so if he could crawl into some shade before catching a tan, he would eventually be back in fighting trim.

While most vampires in Sunnydale used the sewers for movement, that was mostly the storm drain system and other large, spacious, mobile pipes that had a minimum of waste in them. Spike on the other hand had decided to make sure that his lair had other means of escape. Hauling himself out of that hellish battlefield and into a running sewer had taken everything in him, but at least he wasn't dust like everyone else.

Still, he would avoid the exact details of his escape in any theoretical memoirs he might write. No need for the full details to be known by the next generation of blood suckers.

Well… he'd seen Dru go down -damn the Slayer and her friends!- but he'd lost track of the hair gel ponce who had brought all of that down on them. He hoped the bastard was dust in the wind along with everyone else now.

Damn Slayer! She and her friends had been acting weird for months now, but this was a bit much!

Crawling along hand over hand into a nice bit of shelter in the form of an unlocked storage shed, Spike collapsed and relaxed, letting his undead flesh begin the glacially slow process of regenerating the massive amount of damage he had suffered while his mind began the process of thinking about how he was going to get his revenge for this.

This was going to take a special amount of effort to get _just_ right.

* * *

Oz sat quietly beneath the light of the moon. It would be full in two days and for some strange reason over the past few days he had been feeling a strange magnetic pull to the celestial body. He idly scratched at the bandages that swathed the mark where his cousin had bit him. Crazy kid, his parents really should have learned to control him better.

Perhaps because of his more nocturnal activities he had taken up recently, he found that he could not get to sleep this night, despite the fact that they had nothing scheduled for the evening. No, he felt a sort of electric tingle in the air. Pacing back and forth, he eventually just quietly slipped out of the house, drawn by something he could not comprehend.

There was definitely something in the air, for he could hear the barking of dogs all over the town as they were agitated by the coming of something that tickled at their canine sensibilities. Something within Oz made him want to scream at the near full moon, to howl along with the symphony of voices.

Before he knew it, Oz was rushing along, headed for the woods outside town, his body hunched over and his arms twitching almost as if he wanted to run along on all fours. Soon a trickle of creatures joined him. First it was just stray and escaped dogs, but soon other creatures like coyotes had joined in. There were dozens of canids all around Oz, and he growled at them, telling them to stay in line.

A part of Oz felt the same as he had during Halloween, trapped within his own body while something else took him over, but another part felt wild and free, running with a pack.

His senses alight in ways he had never before experienced Oz bayed triumphantly as the pack arrived at a large cave in the middle of the wooded region around Sunnydale. He could smell all the animals around him, picking out each individual scent marking each member. They howled and yipped in frantic excitation. Drool dribbling down his face, Oz snapped at them all, calling for quiet as a high pitched hum he had barely been aware of hearing began to become unbearable.

Eyes alight with fire, he watched as strange, static charged mist began to leak from the mouth of the cave. For several tense moments nothing happened, but then sparks were seen dancing across the floor of the interior. Padding out carefully, iron hard claws scraping away rock in sprays of orange fire, Freki emerged into view.

The size of a rhino, the ancient Fenrisian Wolf had lived for millennia, hardened by constant battle and exposure to the Warp. His hide bullet-proof and his jaws capable of crushing a man in full power armour, he could take on a main battle tank and have a good chance of winning.

All those who had gathered prostrated themselves before the titanic wolf even as the enormous creature sat down next to the entrance, a sentinel waiting for his master while his brother Geri emerged and flanked the opposite side.

For a span of heartbeats all was still and then _he _arrived. Over ten feet tall, the giant known as Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves, set foot on _a _Earth, if not _his _Earth, for the first time in ten thousand years. While he did not possess the flashier abilities, he was a massively powerful psychic to match his peerless skill at arms. He had lost his original equipment so long ago, but the powered armour that could assist him no longer existed, and in his hands and with his mind even a rock would be a deadly weapon capable of sundering any armour, while bolter rounds would shatter against his skin. But he did not wield a rock but a giant two handed sword that appeared to have been originally designed as a helicopter blade.

Inhaling deeply, Leman Russ looked down over the congregation that had assembled for his arrival, drawn by the massive psychic disturbance he had created blazing a trail to this point. Quirking an eyebrow upward, he considered Oz and asked, "And what are _you _doing here?"


	71. Tall Tales

**Chapter Seventy: Tall Tales**

Outside the city bustled like a kicked over insect nest as people tried to go about their lives while ignoring the looming threat of war, but inside it was quiet and dark, the low lighting obscured by smoke from various burning narcotics. While it had a reputation for being a bit of a rough place that attracted the rowdy military boys on shore leave, it was actually a more sedate place where the less rambunctious NCOs and officers would go to forget about rank for a few hours without indulging in the wilder behaviour of their subordinates.

The place was an archetype, a pattern repeated subconsciously countless billions of times throughout the galaxy and, unbeknownst to even the more savvy travellers, across the greater cosmos as a whole. And central to this archetype was that one table, the place that was invitation only, and even an invite wouldn't guarantee your stay, as the price of a seat was a story.

With thoughts turned to the morbid with the war raging on other worlds and in the void between the stars, somehow the subject of ghost stories had come up. Those gathered around the table had already progressed through the basic ones, of things seen in the shadows of hyperspace, of messages received from dead wingmen warning of impending doom, and other common tales.

Then, the musician, a comely young woman in the shadowy background seemed to pick up on the mood and shifted into something a touch stranger and more haunting. This caused one of the men at the table to put down his glass with an audible thump. Everyone looked at him and he said, "Now _I _have a tale for you."

Human or near human, he had the broad, ever so slightly out of shape look that suggested a desk job but the hungry, ambitious glint of the eye that suggested that he was not the sort of man to be trifled with. In all likelihood he was an executive or commanding officer on a ship.

Running a finger around the edge of his glass, he said, "Now this happened… oh… I'd say about ten years ago. Back when we were still fighting the Imps, although by that stage things had mostly ground down to skirmishes and cleaning up the warlords and pirates. It was the latter that we were out to find, although they were really more of a minor criminal syndicate than 'just' pirates."

Pausing for a second to take a sip of his drink, the man continued and said, "So for a couple of months the task group I'm part of has been tracking these pirates, driving them off of shipping when we can and slowly gathering up information. Finally, we've got enough that we think we can lay a trap for the bastards. So we're lying in wait, half the task force escorting a group of freighters 'loaded' with expensive, military grade hyperdrive motivators, the sort of thing your average pirate in a rust bucket death trap would typically salivate over. The other half of us are hiding in the shadow of a gas giant, using its moons and magnetic field to screen us while stealth relays fed us information. Once the pirates attacked we were going to boost of out the grav well and make a quick jump to hand with both feet on them."

"I've heard this one before," one of the other members of the table said with a smirk.

"Shut up, and no you haven't," the storyteller replied. "This doesn't one involve the pirates springing the trap on us only for something to intervene, no, this one gets weirder. Technically this story was classified for two years after the incident while the spooks worked on figuring out what happened."

Pausing to collect his thoughts again, the man continued, "Anyway, we're sitting there when you can see the comm. officer starting to get a little freaked out by something. Eventually he told the CO that he has picking up an anomalous transmission. Now, our CO, he was this leathery Calamari bastard, hardest fish this side of old Ackbar. So he takes a quick listen in on what's freaking out our comm. boy and I swear to the Force he goes whiter than Hoth."

One of the female members of the table, a Twi'lek commando, asked, "Is this…?"

"Yeah, this is about _Killfrenzy_," the storyteller said with a nod, causing a small collection of whispers amongst the table before dying down to let the man finish.

"Now, I don't know what you've all heard or not heard, but I was _there_, on the bridge when this happened. Something was broadcasting… I don't know if they ever figured out how they were doing it, but somehow they used an entire gas giant as an antenna, broadcasting all over the system. I even _heard_ the broadcast," the man then paused to shudder and take a drink.

"I know who has heard that signal and who's just heard the stories. The _Killfrenzy _broadcasts, they're not some guy speaking or even a chant. No, those broadcasts are a song, a religious hymn out of the darkest recesses of time. Yeah, there is a voice that is saying 'Kill frenzy' over and over again, the words blended into one long madness mantra, but there's more. The voice chanting it is guttural and oddly accented, like it doesn't know Basic and just memorized those two words. And in the background there's a… 'doom choir' I suppose you could call it, adding in strange lyrics in an unknown language and random bursts of psychotic, high pitched cackling, almost like children literally laughing to death. If you listen to it for more than a few seconds you start to feel your skin crawl," the man said before shuddering once more in revulsion and finishing off his drink.

His audience now listening raptly, he said, "So we've got this radio signal coming from all around us chanting this psychotic message and we figure it's some sort of trap so we bug out of there as quickly as we can. We never even see the pirates, and we suspect later that they got the kriff out of there when they heard that broadcast too."

"Good story," one of the members of the table said, before the storyteller held up a hand.

"I'm not done," the man replied, earning raised eyebrows.

"Now, most of the _Killfrenzy _stories would end here, but a week later and we haven't heard a peep from the pirates. Eventually one of our agents reports that their smaller bases have lost contact with their main base. So we take the whole task group out to that location, half expecting an ambush, only we find nothing. There's a hollowed out asteroid that obviously used to be a base, but there's nothing left there now. _Nothing._ Long range sensors track an object moving into the shadow of a desolate planet, and we only got a fuzzy blob of a signal off it before it vanished in a weird burst of energy. We didn't even get a hyperspace tracking off of it, it just _disappeared_. We did however get a radio signal still bouncing around the system, this quiet, plaintive whistling song of a transmission. I think _Killfrenzy _found somewhere to satiate its urges," the man explained.

The Twi'lek from before then spoke up slightly and said, "Uh… I actually might have a continuation of your story. This happened about… three or four years ago. We found a wreck in deep space. It was a wreck of a pirate up-gunned medium freighter floating in the debris cloud above the elliptic of a Mid Rim star system. No bodies, although it had been exposed to vacuum so some of the bloodstains were preserved. Really freaky boarding it though. When boarding abandoned ships, you get a feeling for which ones are going to be bad, and that one was the worst sort of feeling."

Those gathered around the table all nodded knowingly. The best sorts of soldiers, and those were the ones with stories to tell, all had a set of instincts that told them when a mission didn't feel right, when something was about to go wrong.

"We were all tense going in there. If we had a Jedi assigned to us I'm sure he would have been yammering on about the Dark Side, but I would have been agreeing whole heartedly. Something _evil _happened in that place. As I said, we found some bloodstains, but they were mostly just rust coloured patches here and there. Then again, there must have been a major massacre in there to even get that much blood to stay in those conditions. I hate to think what it might have looked like when it was still new," she explained.

Pausing to remember the details more clearly, she then said, "I any case, we eventually reach the bridge and try to power the wreck up. No good there though, not because its power systems are busted up, but because the fuel tanks were empty. Nothing _particularly _strange there, but by this point everything was making us jumpy. So we get portable generators hooked up and start poking around.

"Ten minutes in, we're all more stressed than matter at the heart of a neutron star, and our slicer just loses it. Poor bastard does a triple take before he just sort of curls up. It turns out the chronometer logs stopped recording some time about a thousand years from now when the last of the fuel decayed away in the tanks. Radio-isotope data pegged the ship as being older than the Great Sith War, while the ship's design is from the Clone Wars. Now, we've found ships abandoned since the Great Hyperspace War in the lightless parts of space far from stars, and we've found ships displaced in time due to faulty relativistic shielding, but never anything that looks like it went _back _in time," the Twi'lek woman explained.

"Now, the brass declared that it was just a malfunctioning wreck, but we were drawn to the area in the first place and we deployed actual boarder teams first instead of a salvage team because we detected a strange radio transmission from that area and then picked up the metal of the hull. We assumed it was a trap, but… _nothing…_ just a weird, time lost, impossible ship," the Twi'lek explained, twitching her lekku in agitation at the memories.

Finally a rough looking human male with the sort of scarring that implied seeing recent ground action against the Yuuzhan Vong said, "I've got you all beat. I _saw _the _Killfrenzy_."

This raised a number of eyebrows before he smirked and took a pull from his beer. Running his tongue over his teeth a few times, he leaned back in his chair, ran a finger over a particularly nasty acid mark on his face and said, "This happened shortly before I picked up this little beauty, which I am actually here to get removed. Now, my task force was assigned to hunting down the Vong's kriffing slaver ships when we find a destroyer analog just drifting in space, the ship 'alive' but the crew apparently no longer at the helm.

"So we slip in close with a boarding ship and send in the marines. Full vacuum armour, power assist, big guns: essentially the full Vong killing kit that most ground pounders really wish they had access to all the time. Now we get in there, and it's like something out of a bad horror vid. Considering that Vong ships are _normally _like that, that's saying something. Everything's dead inside. If it was wearing armour, there's no head. If it _wasn't _wearing armour it's been hacked to pieces. There's no sign of who did it, but the slave pens are all empty and there's some weird symbols painted on the walls in the blood of the dead," the man, who those at the table now suspected was a marine, explained.

"So we're getting ready to haul this thing off for the R&D boys to take a look at when we pick up this radio transmission. I didn't hear it myself, but the rumours all said it was the _Killfrenzy _song. We also notice an anomalous gravity distortion, sort of like what a coralskipper might produce, but much weaker, and its travelling away from the general vicinity of the transmission. So one group goes off to find the source of the gravity distortion and the bigger group looks for where the radio transmission is coming from. I'm in the latter group. We _see _it, hiding behind the horizon of an uninhabited ice world, bouncing its signal off the ionosphere," the man explained.

Taking a deep breathe, he detailed further, "It was big. As in twice the size of an Imp Star big, but it looked primitive too, like someone had taken some ancient stone cathedral and launched it into space. I suppose like that big flying castle thing the Hapans have, only less elegant and more evil looking. It's studded with guns, and it's just hanging there, screaming out its chant when it starts boosting out of orbit. Slow and ugly, but we don't want to get close to it. While we're trailing it, trying to sort out all the things stuck on its hull, it disappears in a flash of weird light and strange sensor readings. It didn't jump to lightspeed, but it definitely didn't cloak either. And when it disappeared in that strange light, everyone who was looking at it felt a chill down their spine. It was never classified, the spooks have other things to worry about, but I don't think that ship is on our side."

There was a consensus of nods and then, no one thinking that they could top that story, they slowly began to disperse for the night.

Once everyone was gone, the musician quietly packed up her instrument and walked into the back. She took a few moments to take off her make-up before she opened her locker in the empty back room.

With a loud thump the body of a Yuuzhan Vong spy fell out of the locker, her body folded in half hours earlier, her ooglith masquer neatly set on top of her corpse, the features on the organic infiltration suit identical to the musician now obliviously packing up her things.

A few minutes later an old man who went by the moniker Marti left the locker room, whistling a slow, plaintive song in an alien language.

"Gott weiss ich will kein Engel sein."


End file.
